fallibility

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

English fallible

Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂

Proto-Indo-European *-ts

Proto-Indo-European *-teh₂tsder.

Latin -itās

Old French -itebor.

Middle English -ite

English -ity

English fallibility

From fallible + -ity.

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /fæləˈbɪləti/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

fallibility (countable and uncountable, plural fallibilities)

1. The state of being prone to error.
   • 1931, H. P. Lovecraft, chapter 2, in The Whisperer in Darkness:

     ...they had a damnably suggestive power which was intensified by the fact of their being genuine photographs—actual optical links with what they portrayed, and the product of an impersonal transmitting process without prejudice, fallibility, or mendacity.

2. (countable) An error-generating characteristic.
   • 2009 March 11, “Doctor-Patient-Computer Relationships”, in The New York Times‎^[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 26 November 2022:

     Dr. Anne Armstrong-Coben has provided a spot-on description of the fallibilities of the electronic medical record from the standpoint of the doctor-patient encounter.

Antonyms

• infallibility

Translations

state of being prone to error

• Catalan: fal·libilitat (ca) f
• Dutch: feilbaarheid (nl)
• French: faillibilité (fr) f
• Galician: falibilidade (gl) f
• Hungarian: gyarlóság (hu)
• Kyrgyz: жаңылыштык (ky) (jaŋılıştık), жаңылышкандык (ky) (jaŋılışkandık)
• Spanish: falibilidad (es) f

error-generating characteristic

Anagrams

• fillability