DOWNFALL • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Downfall

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/dˈaʊnfˌɔl/ Listen

noun

Downfall n.

A sudden fall; a body of things falling. "Those cataracts or downfalls aforesaid." "Each downfall of a flood the mountains pour."

A sudden descent from rank or state, reputation or happiness; destruction; ruin; as, the senator's unrestrained sexual escapades led to his downfall. "Dire were the consequences which would follow the downfall of so important a place."

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Etymology of 'Downfall'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Downfall" Quotes from Famous Books

... him; that he ought to have taken Rome from him, as he tore away Milan from the Emperor of Germany. The five rulers of France went so far as to make reproaches against Bonaparte for his leniency, and to require from him the downfall of the pope, and ...

— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach

... of Napoleon and hoped by his aid to gain the lost province of Finland and win revenge upon Russia, their old enemy. Bernadotte saw farther than they, feeling that the inordinate ambition of Napoleon must lead to his downfall and that it was best for Sweden to have an anchor out to leeward. But all these political deals had to be kept from the ...

— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris

... here! Though she despised me, deceived me, broke my heart in life, and in death betrayed a devotion for another that was at once my dishonor and the downfall of my every hope, I have never been able to cast her out of my heart. I love her, and shall ever love her, and so I am never lonely. For in my dreams I imagine that death has changed her. That she can see now where ...

— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... observer she perhaps did look—what Madame always pronounced her—sulky. Then, no matter how fully any lesson was at her fingers' ends, she stumbled through a series of childish blunders to utter downfall; and Madame's wrath was only equalled by her irony. To do Matilda justice, she often used almost incredible courage in her efforts to learn a task in spite of herself. Now and then she was successful in defying pain; but by some odd ...

— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... truculence, the early numbers of the Edinburgh and Quarterly are memorable for two reasons in the history of English literature. They mark the downfall of the absolute standard assumed by Johnson and others to hold good in criticism. And they led the way, slowly indeed but surely, to the formation of a general interest in literature, which, sooner or later, could not but be fatal ...

— English literary criticism • Various

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