Fall

Part of speech: verb, noun

Pronunciation: /fɔːl/

Definitions

1. To drop or descend from a higher to a lower position due to gravity or loss of balance
2. To move downward quickly from a higher place as a result of gravity or to lose one's balance while standing or walking
3. To descend abruptly from a higher elevation caused by gravity or to experience a decline in status or strength
4. To descend toward the ground due to gravity or an accident, potentially leading to injury or a decrease in quality, status, or reputation

Etymology: Old English "feallan" meant far more than tumbling to the ground. Its sense range covered to fail, decay, die and even to attack, and the same root gives Latin "aboleō" ("to destroy"), Greek "óllūmi" ("to destroy; to lose") and Lithuanian "pùlti" ("to fall; to attack"). The Proto-Indo-European ancestor carried the sense of collapse and destruction, so the physical drop was only one branch of a family of ideas about things going under. The noun has a parallel story. Old English "feall" meant "a falling," but "fealle" meant "trap" or "snare," from the same Proto-Germanic root, and the two senses sat side by side. A trap was a thing that caught you as you dropped. The most surprising sense is "autumn." By the 1660s in England, "fall" was a shortening of "fall of the leaf," dating from the 1540s, because the leaves fell in that season. It largely replaced the older word "harvest," which had come to mean only the act of gathering crops. "Spring" followed the same pattern, shortened from "spring of the leaf."

Synonyms: drop, plummet, descend, tumble, collapse

Antonyms: rise, ascend, climb, lift, soar