fall
- noun
- /fɔl/
- Last week, my grandmother had a serious fall down the stairs and had to go to the hospital.
- free fall
- fall-related injury
- fall risk
My mom had a fall, like, four years ago.
- My mom had a fall, like, four years ago.
- A child doesn't have to fall down, but wants to know on that first fall that hurt.
Examples
-
We thought it was just a fall but now she can't move or even speak.
-
She's recuperating from a fall she took from a bicycle near USC.
-
My mom had a fall, like, four years ago.
-
Sorry about the fall, Sam.
-
No, I lost it in the fall.
-
The police said the cuts were from the fall.
-
I forgot to close the door to the basement, and Zach had a bad fall.
-
Andy leaps into his arms; he breaks her fall and helps her alight safely.
Fiction book (1990) -
You're taking the fall.
-
The aim was to determine secular trends in fall-related mortality in persons aged 65 years or older.
Academic text (2012)
Synonyms
Coming down to a surface from the air or sea
An act of dropping from a higher place
A movement down from a higher place to a lower place or a slope that goes down
A rolling fall or gymnastic turn of the body
A sudden fall from a higher place to a lower place
A steep sudden fall from a higher to a lower level
A sudden fall when someone loses balance while moving
A sudden steep fall of a plane with its front pointing down
An event when something falls or is let go and hits the ground
A thing that falls down freely because of gravity
To move something to a lower position
Antonyms
Idioms
- Informal
To accept what happens and not try to change the result
- Informal
To fail completely and feel embarrassed in front of others
Children often look and behave like their parents
- Informal
To react strongly because something is very funny or surprising
- Vulgar
To lose your balance and land on your backside in an awkward or embarrassing way
- Informal
Suddenly fail completely because it is weak or badly built
- Formal
To die as a Christian who trusts in God and expects life after death
To keep trying after many failures no matter how often you fail
Compounds
- Literature
An event in the Bible when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, lost their innocence, and left the Garden
- Specialized
A green or brown caterpillar with white stripes that eats tree leaves in autumn
A small European plant with yellow flowers that blooms in the fall and is now common in North America
- US
The time when day and night are almost the same length, marking the start of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere
- Literature
A Christian belief that people lose their innocence when they disobey God
- Specialized
A caterpillar that lives in large silk nests on tree branches and eats the leaves in late summer and fall
A bush that loses its leaves and has large cone-shaped flowers in fall
How Dramatic
Surface Forms
Etymology
Fall as a noun comes from the same old English feallan meaning 'to fall', used for the act of dropping. So a fall is the movement of coming down from higher to lower.