fall
Definitions
General English
- noun an amount of something which has come down
- noun the process of going to a lower level
- noun the act of losing your balance
Accounting
- noun a sudden reduction or loss of value
- verb to be reduced suddenly to a lower price or value
- verb to happen or to take place
Aviation
- noun the amount of rain or snow which comes down at any one time
- verb to become less in amount
- verb to drop or come down freely because of gravity
- verb to occur at a particular time
Construction
Cricket
- noun the taking of a wicketCitation ‘A batsman may retire at any time during his innings…. If after retiring a batsman resumes his innings, it shall be only at the fall of a wicket or the retirement of another batsman’ (Law 2 § 9)
- verb (of a wicket) to be taken by the bowling side when a batsman is dismissedCitation ‘In 58 minutes seven wickets had fallen for 19 runs on a pitch playing little worse than in the first innings’ (Brearley 1982)
Law
- verb to happen on a particular day or date
Military
- noun a descent to the ground (usually out of control)
- verb to be killed in action
Politics
- noun a loss of political power or control
Sports
- noun in wrestling, a scoring move in which a wrestler forces the opponent’s shoulders to the floor for a specific period
Origin & History of “fall”
The verb fall comes from prehistoric Germanic *fallan, which also produced German fallen, Dutch vallen, and Swedish falla. The noun is partly a survival of Old English feall, partly a borrowing from the related Old Norse fall, but probably mostly a new formation based on the verb. The sense ‘autumn’, now restricted to American English, originated in the 16th century from an earlier phrase fall of the leaf. (Fell ‘cut down’ is related: etymologically it means ‘cause to fall’.).
