failure

failure, neglect, default, miscarriage, dereliction are comparable when they mean an omission on the part of someone or something of what is expected or required oj him or of it.

Failure basically implies a being found wanting; it implies a lack or absence of something that might have been expected to occur or to be accomplished, performed, or effected

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there was a general failure of crops that year

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a distressing confusion in discussions of the human-interest story has been caused by a common failure to define the term— Mott

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you will hear a great deal of talk about the failure of Christianity; but where in the Holy Gospels ... do you find any suggestion that Christianity is to be an easy triumph?— Mackenzie

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Neglect (see also NEGLIGENCE) implies carelessness and inattentiveness on the part of a person, so that what is expected or required of him is either left unattended to or is not adequately performed

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in wartime a charge of neglect of duty is a very serious one

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his neglect of his health is a source of much worry to his friends

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the property has become dilapidated through the owner's neglect

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we made a nice tidy cleanup .... If I hadn't done it I ought ... to have been shot for neglect— H. G. Wells

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Default is now chiefly found in legal use, where it implies a failure to perform something required by law (as a failure of a plaintiff or of a defendant to appear at the appointed time to prosecute or defend an action or a proceeding)

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in case of default on the part of the plaintiff, he may be nonsuited

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in case of default on the part of the defendant, he may have a judgment rendered against him, this being called a judgment by default

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Default may also imply a failure to pay one's debts at the appointed time

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convicted of default in the payment of a fine

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or in extended use a failure to perform something required, usually by total omission of pertinent action

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betraying by default the privileges of citizenship in a democratic society— Dean

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lose a tennis match by default

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Miscarriage does not so definitely point the blame for a failure of someone or something to live up to expectations or to accomplish certain ends as do the preceding words; it is often used when there are no definite persons or things to which culpability can be assigned or when for some reason or other there is a desire to avoid casting of blame

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there was a serious miscarriage of justice in that trial

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the causes of the miscarriage of the project were not clear

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we fear . . . some miscarriage in the details of our plan— Krutch

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these various miscarriages cannot all be ascribed to ill fortune— Grenfell

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Dereliction, of all these terms, carries the strongest implication of a neglect that amounts to an abandonment of, or a departure from, the thing and especially the duty, the principle, or the law that should have been uppermost in a person's mind; ordinarily it implies a morally reprehensible failure rather than one resulting from carelessness and inattention or from mishap

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they would be answerable with their lives for any further dereliction of duty— Ainsworth

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it revealed in him . . . the indisputable signs of a certain dereliction from some path of development his nature had commanded him to follow— Brooks

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Analogous words: *fault, failing: shortcoming, deficiency, "imperfection: *lack, want, absence, privation, dearth: negligence, laxness, slackness, remissness (see corresponding adjectives at NEGLIGENT): indifference, unconcernedness or unconcern (see corresponding adjectives at INDIFFERENT)