falhar

Forms

falhar (first-person singular present falho, first-person singular preterite falhei, past participle falhado)^[1] Houaiss's earliest record is spelt falarem, and Wiktionary gives the medieval form as fallar.^[2][1]

Etymology

Houaiss, Aurélio and the DLP analyse it as formed from Portuguese falha + -ar.^[2][3][4] Wiktionary gives this and a second possibility, inheritance from Old Galician-Portuguese fallar, from a verb of the first conjugation in Late Latin, itself from Latin fallō (“to deceive”).^[1] Figueiredo and Silva Bastos derived it straight from the Latin verb.^[5][6] Nascentes derives it from *fallia and rejects the etymon proposed by A. Coelho as impossible in its sounds.^[7]

The base noun, meaning “crack, flaw”, comes from that Vulgar Latin noun according to Houaiss and Cunha, probably influenced by French faille.^[8][9] Wiktionary takes it as a borrowing of the French word.^[1] Medieval Latin already used forms of the verb with the senses “to fail, go wrong” and “to neglect”.^[10]

De Vaan derives the Latin verb from Proto-Italic *falsō and Proto-Indo-European *sgʷʰh₂el- (“to stumble”), with the cognates स्खल् (skhal, “to stumble, fail”) and σφάλλω (sphállō, “to bring down”).^[11][1] The verbs Galician fallar, Spanish fallar, Catalan fallar, Occitan falhar and Italian fallare are related.^[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

Houaiss dates the verb to 1188–1230, from Machado's dictionary, in the spelling falarem; the context is not quoted.^[2] A cantiga d'escarnho of Afonso X has se migo falhasse “if he failed me”, in the sense “to do wrong, to fail in one's duty”.^[12]

Semantic evolution

Pereira (1697) renders it with Latin deficio “to fail”.^[13] Bluteau explains it as a term of the board game of tábulas reais, failing to throw the points needed to enter, and says the wider sense “to fail” came from there; he also gives a goldsmith's sense, to lose weight when gold or silver is worked.^[14] Feijó (1734) equates it with faltar.^[15] Morais (1813) puts first the sense “to crack, making a flaw”, as of a glass.^[16] Figueiredo (1899) adds “to misfire”, of a gun, and “not to come about”.^[5]

The Brazilian senses “to stop overnight on a journey” and, in Rio Grande do Sul, “to interrupt a journey” and “to fail to become pregnant”, of a female animal, are recorded by Beaurepaire-Rohan, Houaiss and Schlee.^[2][17][18]

Timeline

• 1188–1230 – Houaiss's earliest date, spelt falarem.^[2]
• 13th century – falla, the older spelling of falha.^[9]
• 1513 – the Livro dos Mártires uses the verb.^[19]
• 1697 – Pereira renders it with Latin deficio.^[13]
• 1712–1728 – Bluteau records it as a term of a board game and of goldsmiths.^[14]
• 1813 – Morais gives “to crack” as the first sense.^[16]
• 1889 – Beaurepaire-Rohan records the Brazilian sense “to break off a journey”.^[17]
• 1899 – Figueiredo records “to misfire”.^[5]

Meanings

Verb

1. To make a falha in; to crack, split or chip.^[2][3]
2. To miss (a target); to err: Falhou o penálti no último minuto.^[2][20]
3. Not to work, or to work badly; to fail: O motor falhou na subida.^[2][21]
4. To fail to do or keep (something), with a: falhar a um compromisso.^[2][3]
5. Not to turn out as expected; to come to nothing, fall through.^[2][22]
6. Of a firearm or a shot: to misfire.^[5][20]
7. To lose weight or measure, as metal being worked or a crop that yields less.^[2][22]
8. (Brazil) To stop overnight somewhere during a journey;^[2][18] (Rio Grande do Sul) to interrupt or put off a journey.^[2][18]
9. (Rio Grande do Sul) Of a female animal: not to become pregnant.^[2][18]
10. (backgammon) Not to throw the points needed.^[2][16]

Related words

• falha
• falho
• falta
• faltar
• falso
• falecer
• Latin fallō

References

1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. falhar
3. ^ a b c Ferreira, Aurélio Buarque de Holanda, Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa, digital edition, p. s.v. falhar
4. ^ Academia das Ciências de Lisboa, Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, revised online edition (2023–) of the Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa Contemporânea (2001), https://dicionario.acad-ciencias.pt, p. s.v. falhar
5. ^ a b c d Figueiredo, Cândido de (1899), Novo diccionário da língua portuguesa, 1st ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Tavares Cardoso & Irmão, p. 597
6. ^ Silva Bastos, José Timóteo da (1912), Diccionario etymologico, prosodico e orthographico da lingua portugueza, Lisboa: Parceria António Maria Pereira, p. s.v. falhar
7. ^ Nascentes, Antenor (1955), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, vol. 1: Nomes comuns, Rio de Janeiro (1st ed. 1932, preface by W. Meyer-Lübke), p. 208
8. ^ Houaiss, Antônio; Villar, Mauro de Salles (2001), Dicionário Houaiss da língua portuguesa, Rio de Janeiro: Objetiva, p. s.v. falha
9. ^ a b Cunha, Antônio Geraldo da (2010), Dicionário etimológico da língua portuguesa, 4th ed., Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, p. s.v. falha
10. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. fallere
11. ^ de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill, p. s.v. fallō
12. ^ Instituto da Lingua Galega, Dicionario de dicionarios do galego medieval (DDGM), ed. Ernesto González Seoane, Santiago de Compostela: Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, https://ilg.usc.gal/ddgm, p. s.v. falhar
13. ^ a b Pereira, Bento (1697), Thesouro da lingoa portuguesa, in the 1697 edition of his Prosodia (1st ed. 1647; CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. falhar
14. ^ a b Bluteau, Raphael (1712–1728), Vocabulario portuguez e latino, 8 vols. + 2 supplement vols., Coimbra / Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. falhar
15. ^ Feijó, João de Morais Madureira (1734), Orthographia, ou Arte de escrever, e pronunciar com acerto a lingua portugueza, Lisboa (CLP transcription, Universidade de Aveiro), p. s.v. falhar
16. ^ a b c Silva, António de Morais (1813), Diccionario da lingua portugueza, 2nd ed., 2 vols., Lisboa: Typographia Lacerdina, p. 2, 6
17. ^ a b Beaurepaire-Rohan, Henrique de (1889), Diccionario de vocabulos brazileiros, Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, p. s.v. falhar
18. ^ a b c d Schlee, Aldyr Garcia (2019), Dicionário da Cultura Pampeana Sul-Rio-Grandense, 2 vols., Pelotas: Fructos do Paiz, p. s.v. falhar
19. ^ Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, CTA – Corpus de Textos Antigos, https://teitok.clul.ul.pt/cta, p. s.v. falhar
20. ^ a b Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa, Lisboa: Priberam Informática, https://dicionario.priberam.org, p. s.v. falhar
21. ^ Aulete, Francisco Júlio Caldas, Dicionário contemporâneo da língua portuguesa (1st ed. 1881), online as Aulete Digital, Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon, https://aulete.com.br, p. s.v. falhar
22. ^ a b Michaelis: Moderno Dicionário da Língua Portuguesa, São Paulo: Melhoramentos (online as Michaelis Dicionário Brasileiro da Língua Portuguesa, https://michaelis.uol.com.br), p. s.v. falhar