A flaw or weak point

Usage examples of failing.

Terrible as were the losses of the Huguenots by fire and sword, considerable as were the defections from their ranks of those who found in the reformed Catholic church a spiritual refuge, still greater was the loss of the Protestant cause in failing to secure the adherence of such minds as Dolet and Rabelais, Ronsard and Montaigne, and of the thousands influenced by them.

The husband married again, and on his return to Massachusetts, his ex-wife petitioned the Massachusetts court to adjudge him in contempt for failing to make payments for her separate support under the earlier Massachusetts decree.

Berry was aroused by an unusual prolonged wailing of the child, which showed that no one was comforting it, and failing to get any answer to her applications for admittance, she made bold to enter.

I ran, carrying the cat litter box like a pizza tray, disrupting the class, causing Winnie to become highly agitato, unable to explain because I had a cigar in my mouth and was carrying a pizza tray and running for my life from men who were carrying wildly beeping receivers which made them Israeli spies and men who were wildly firing weapons which made them Arab terrorists and the whole macho parade failing to arouse or interest the girls in the slightest, which, of course, made them lesbians.

This failing was often combined with a disdain for compromise, an almost sublime disregard for reality, at least as Aiken knew it.

Patterne Port kept Dr Middleton in a benevolent reserve when Willoughby decided that something said by De Craye was not new, and laughingly accused him of failing to consult his anecdotal notebook for the double-cross to his last sprightly sally.

In the failing light Ryan and the Armorer had peered carefully at the ground around the paths, looking for some signs of disturbed earth.

Failing to understand, Auletes had made no attempt to conciliate them.

You bribed the former enumerator with both golds and your daughter, and blame me for their failings and yours.

But Cai knew it was his failing mental faculties that had forced him to end his career.

I did not confess as much to myself, for I could never bear to calmly view my own failings, but afterwards I came to the conclusion that I acted a part throughout.

It is surely inconceivable that any living thing be beautiful failing a Life-Absolute of a wonderful, an ineffable, beauty: this must be the Collective Life, made up of all living things, or embracing all, forming a unity coextensive with all, as our universe is a unity embracing all the visible.

They accomplished this by making the most frequently failing parts of the copier into a replaceable cartridge.

He saw Jenna snatch up two of the reeds - in his struggle to escape the slings, they had scattered all over the head of the bed - and then they were hurrying up the aisle, away from the bugs and from Sister Coquina, whose cries were now failing.

The chief door was locked, and I saw at once that, failing a catapult or a mine of gunpowder, I could not possibly get through.