downfall
Noun

downfall

  1. A precipitous decline#Noun|decline in fortune; death or rapid#Adjective|rapid deterioration, as in status or wealth.
    Synonyms: fall, doom
    Many economic and political reasons led to the downfall of the Roman Empire.
  2. The cause#Noun|cause of such a fall; a critical blow#Noun|blow or error.
    • Orson Scott Card
      It is the downfall of evil, that it never sees far enough ahead.
  3. An act#Noun|act of falling down.
    a downfall of rain
    • 1880–1881, Thomas Hardy, chapter VII, in A Laodicean; or, The Castle of the De Stancys. A Story of To-day. [...] In Three Volumes, volume II, London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, […], published 1881, OCLC 1080146765 ↗, book the third (De Stancy), page 147 ↗:
      [T]he prominent character of leading young lady or heroine, which Paula was to personate, was really the most satisfactory in the whole list for her. For although she was to be wooed hard, there was just as much love-making among the remaining personages; while, as Somerset had understood the play, there could occur no flingings of her person upon her lover's neck, or agonized downfalls upon the stage, in her whole performance, [...]
Translations Translations Verb

downfall (downfalls, present participle downfalling; past downfell, past participle downfallen)

  1. (intransitive) To fall down; deteriorate; decline.
    • 1998, Peter Vink, Ernst A. P. Koningsveld, Steven Dhondt, Human factors in organizational design and management-VI:
      Common belief has been that in the future the number of middle managers will downfall due to empowerment and team-building.
    • 1998, Lithuanian physics journal:
      It should be noted that the magnitude of satellites decreases when tuning out of degeneracy, and in the wavelength range of 1.2-1.3 pm it downfalls to the value of 10-15% of the main spike magnitude.



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