Default

Part of speech: noun, verb

Pronunciation: /dɪˈfɒlt/

Definitions

1. A failure to fulfill an obligation or make a required payment, or the predetermined setting that applies automatically when no alternative is chosen
2. A condition where obligations are not met or payments are skipped, along with the standard configuration that automatically takes effect when no choice is made
3. The situation arising from not meeting financial responsibilities or obligations, as well as the established setting that is applied in the absence of a selection

Etymology: The sense of "default" as a failure to pay or fulfil an obligation grows directly out of its older meaning of a moral or practical fault. In Old French, "defaute" meant fault, defect, failure or lack, and it came from a Latin pairing: "de-", meaning away, plus "fallere", meaning to deceive or to escape notice. The underlying picture is of something slipping away from you or being missed, which is why the same root gave English "fail" and "false" by other routes. The word arrived in Middle English as "defaut" and "defaute", carrying that sense of a shortcoming or lapse. Its legal and financial meaning, a party failing to meet what it owes, follows naturally from that idea of falling short, and it is the sense most people now associate with the word. The computing sense, the setting a system uses when no one specifies otherwise, comes from the same idea of a lapse in the expected action: when a choice is not made, the program falls back on a preset value.

Synonyms: failure, neglect, noncompliance, omission, overlook

Antonyms: fulfillment, compliance, success