fall – English noun declension

English noun forms of fall

Noun: fall
Singularfall
Pluralfalls

Sample Sentences

  • the fall of the snow
  • the fall of the water
  • the fall of the leaf
  • “I'm through with all pawn-games,” I laughed. “Come, let us have a game of lansquenet. Either I will take a farewell fall out of you or you will have your sevenfold revenge”. [1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter I, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC:]
  • A friend has pointed out to me the following remark on this word: "In North America the season in which this [the fall of the leaf] takes place, derives its name from that circumstance, and instead of autumn is universally called the fall." [brackets in original] [1816, John Pickering, A Vocabulary, or Collection of Words Which Have Been Supposed to Be Peculiar to the United States of America:]
  • The celebrated fall of the Liffey, near Ballymore Eustace, is named Pool-a-Phooka, or The Pooka's Hole. [1850, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, London: H.G. Bohn, page 371:]
  • the fall of Rome
  • A fall of hair tumbled down one side of her body like a veil. [2010, Winter Pennington, Witch Wolf:]
  • The heat of Daniel's gaze was nearly incendiary as he took in the fall of her hair spilling across her shoulders and down to her elbows. [2011, Elizabeth Camden, The Lady of Bolton Hill, page 162:]
  • Female patients with localized hair loss on the top of scalp could select a fall or a demiwig to camouflage crown and anterior scalp loss. [2004, Zoe Diana Draelos, Hair Care: An Illustrated Dermatologic Handbook, →ISBN, page 202:]
  • He set up his rival to take the fall.
  • Have the goodness to secure the falls of the mizzen halyards.
  • "[...] with one overhauled fall flying and an iron-bound block capering in the air." [1919, Joseph Conrad, Typhoon:]
  • Brooks fitted a new fall to his whip. [1945, Tom Ronan, Strangers on the Ophir, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 113:]
  • there had been a great fall of woodcock in the night [1876, John Barker, Syria and Egypt Under the Last Five Sultans of Turkey, Tinsley, page 156:]
  • hen I was spending October on the East Anglian coast, there was a great fall of woodcock [1906 October 17, S. L. Benusan, “The Week-end Papers”, in The Sketch, Ingram Brothers, page 18:]
  • There'll be another frost tonight and no doubt another fall of woodcock in the covers in the morning. [1938 October, “The gentle art of squirrel-shooting”, in Reginald Townsend Townsend, editor, Country Life and the Sportsman, volume 74, Country Life-American Home Corporation:]

Etymology

1. Verb from Middle English fallen, from Old English feallan (“to fall, fail, decay, die, attack”), from Proto-West Germanic *fallan (“to fall”), from Proto-Germanic *fallaną (“to fall”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃elh₁- (“to collapse, fall; to destroy”).
2. Cognates
3. Cognate with Scots faw (“to fall”), Yola vale, vall, vole (“to fall”), North Frisian faal, fåle (“to fall”), Saterland Frisian faale (“to fall”), West Frisian falle (“to fall”), Bavarian foin (“to fall”), Cimbrian ballan, vallan (“to fall”), Dutch vallen (“to fall”), German and Low German fallen (“to fall”), Luxembourgish falen (“to fall”), Yiddish פֿאַלן (faln, “to fall”), Danish falde (“to fall”), Faroese, Icelandic, and Swedish falla (“to fall”), Norwegian Bokmål falle (“to fall”), Norwegian Nynorsk falla, falle (“to fall”); also Latin aboleō (“to destroy; to die”), Ancient Greek ὄλλῡμι (óllūmi, “to destroy; to lose”), Armenian եղեռն (eġeṙn, “crime; calamity, catastrophe; slaughter”), Lithuanian pùlti (“to fall; to attack, assault”).
4. Noun from Middle English fal, fall, falle, from Old English feall, ġefeall (“a falling, fall”) and Old English fealle (“trap, snare”), from Proto-Germanic *fallą, *fallaz (“a fall, trap”). Cognate with Yola vall (“fall”), Dutch val (“fall”), German Fall (“fall”), Danish fald (“fall”), Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish fall (“fall”).
5. Sense of "autumn" is attested by the 1660s in England as a shortening of fall of the leaf (1540s), from the falling of leaves during this season. Along with autumn, it mostly replaced the older name harvest as that name began to be associated strictly with the act of harvesting. Compare spring, which began as a shortening of “spring of the leaf”. See: Old English Nouns 'feallan', Norwegian Bokmål Nouns 'falle', Latin Nouns 'aboleō', Middle English Nouns 'fal', Old English Nouns 'fealle', Dutch Nouns 'val', German Nouns 'Fall', Danish Nouns 'fald'.

Verbs referencing "fall"

German Nouns Fall, Danish Nouns fald.