What's the difference between downfall and fall?

Downfall


Definition:

  • (n.) A sudden fall; a body of things falling.
  • (n.) A sudden descent from rank or state, reputation or happiness; destruction; ruin.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) "The Mayans couldn't even predict their own downfall, could they?"
  • (2) The trial, originally expected to be staid, has exposed severe dysfunction within Bo's family and detailed the complicated tangle of allegiances and affairs that led to his downfall .
  • (3) The imposition of a poll tax on the Scots in 1989 contributed to Margaret Thatcher's downfall and all but wiped out Scottish Toryism.
  • (4) Mal Brough has vowed to stare down calls to resign over his role in the downfall of the former speaker Peter Slipper as the Labor party seeks to build pressure on Malcolm Turnbull for backing the special minister of state.
  • (5) Vladimir Putin painted a colourful picture of Russia's protesters on Thursday, describing them as agents of the west, attending useless demonstrations with condoms pinned to their chests as they sought the downfall of the motherland.
  • (6) Martin Kyrle, 79, a former mayor of Eastleigh and an active member of the Liberal Democrat party for 55 years, attributes Huhne's downfall to "a personal flaw.
  • (7) The 2012 rebellion was partly an unintended consequence of Muammar Gaddafi's downfall in Libya.
  • (8) Zhao, who was kept under intense surveillance at his home after his downfall and whose excursions and visitors were vetted, recorded his memoirs in such secrecy that even family members were unaware of his project.
  • (9) 'No,' he said with his usual solemn deliberation, 'it was the downfall of a great people and a great civilisation.'
  • (10) As ruthless as Liverpool were with their finishing, in particular the irrepressible Luis Suárez , who scored twice to take his tally for the season to 22, Stoke were guilty of some calamitous defending and contributed largely to their own downfall.
  • (11) More than 15 million Egyptians have signed a petition calling for the president's downfall, furious at Morsi's unilateralism and impatient at plummeting living standards.
  • (12) It never does | Lenore Taylor Read more Jamie Briggs resigned as the minister for cities and the built environment after “inappropriate” conduct towards a staffer during an official visit to Hong Kong and Mal Brough stood aside as special minister of state pending a police investigation into his alleged role in the downfall of Peter Slipper.
  • (13) Nokia's downfall came about because its Symbian smartphone software was awash with redundancy and complexity.
  • (14) Thatcher secured her position over more than a decade in power through a brutal belief in her own outlook, a belief that became sclerotic, and led to her downfall.
  • (15) Mal Brough faces fresh parliamentary pressure over his role in the downfall of the former speaker Peter Slipper , after his attempt to walk away from a key admission was undermined by 60 Minutes releasing the unedited interview exchange.
  • (16) Macmillan and Thatcher paid with their jobs for being too brutal; Blair's downfall at the hands of Brown's acolytes was, to some extent at least, a consequence of him not being brutal enough.
  • (17) Today Luzhkov named Medvedev's press secretary, Natalia Timakova, and a Kremlin ideologist, Vladislav Surkov, as plotters of his downfall.
  • (18) The downfall of Sepp Blatter and the disgraced Fifa president’s one-time heir apparent, Michel Platini , is all but complete after both were banned from football for eight years by the world governing body’s own ethics committee.
  • (19) An early example of such alteration was the conversion to desert of the rich Tigris and Euphrates valleys through erosion and salt accumulation resulting from faulty irrigation practices that caused the downfall of the great Mesopotamian civilization.
  • (20) When asked if studio Fox were bothered by this he claimed: “They never said anything!” Despite his new project, Emmerich believes that “sequels are the downfall of films”.

Fall


Definition:

  • (v. t.) To Descend, either suddenly or gradually; particularly, to descend by the force of gravity; to drop; to sink; as, the apple falls; the tide falls; the mercury falls in the barometer.
  • (v. t.) To cease to be erect; to take suddenly a recumbent posture; to become prostrate; to drop; as, a child totters and falls; a tree falls; a worshiper falls on his knees.
  • (v. t.) To find a final outlet; to discharge its waters; to empty; -- with into; as, the river Rhone falls into the Mediterranean.
  • (v. t.) To become prostrate and dead; to die; especially, to die by violence, as in battle.
  • (v. t.) To cease to be active or strong; to die away; to lose strength; to subside; to become less intense; as, the wind falls.
  • (v. t.) To issue forth into life; to be brought forth; -- said of the young of certain animals.
  • (v. t.) To decline in power, glory, wealth, or importance; to become insignificant; to lose rank or position; to decline in weight, value, price etc.; to become less; as, the falls; stocks fell two points.
  • (v. t.) To be overthrown or captured; to be destroyed.
  • (v. t.) To descend in character or reputation; to become degraded; to sink into vice, error, or sin; to depart from the faith; to apostatize; to sin.
  • (v. t.) To become insnared or embarrassed; to be entrapped; to be worse off than before; asm to fall into error; to fall into difficulties.
  • (v. t.) To assume a look of shame or disappointment; to become or appear dejected; -- said of the countenance.
  • (v. t.) To sink; to languish; to become feeble or faint; as, our spirits rise and fall with our fortunes.
  • (v. t.) To pass somewhat suddenly, and passively, into a new state of body or mind; to become; as, to fall asleep; to fall into a passion; to fall in love; to fall into temptation.
  • (v. t.) To happen; to to come to pass; to light; to befall; to issue; to terminate.
  • (v. t.) To come; to occur; to arrive.
  • (v. t.) To begin with haste, ardor, or vehemence; to rush or hurry; as, they fell to blows.
  • (v. t.) To pass or be transferred by chance, lot, distribution, inheritance, or otherwise; as, the estate fell to his brother; the kingdom fell into the hands of his rivals.
  • (v. t.) To belong or appertain.
  • (v. t.) To be dropped or uttered carelessly; as, an unguarded expression fell from his lips; not a murmur fell from him.
  • (v. t.) To let fall; to drop.
  • (v. t.) To sink; to depress; as, to fall the voice.
  • (v. t.) To diminish; to lessen or lower.
  • (v. t.) To bring forth; as, to fall lambs.
  • (v. t.) To fell; to cut down; as, to fall a tree.
  • (n.) The act of falling; a dropping or descending be the force of gravity; descent; as, a fall from a horse, or from the yard of ship.
  • (n.) The act of dropping or tumbling from an erect posture; as, he was walking on ice, and had a fall.
  • (n.) Death; destruction; overthrow; ruin.
  • (n.) Downfall; degradation; loss of greatness or office; termination of greatness, power, or dominion; ruin; overthrow; as, the fall of the Roman empire.
  • (n.) The surrender of a besieged fortress or town ; as, the fall of Sebastopol.
  • (n.) Diminution or decrease in price or value; depreciation; as, the fall of prices; the fall of rents.
  • (n.) A sinking of tone; cadence; as, the fall of the voice at the close of a sentence.
  • (n.) Declivity; the descent of land or a hill; a slope.
  • (n.) Descent of water; a cascade; a cataract; a rush of water down a precipice or steep; -- usually in the plural, sometimes in the singular; as, the falls of Niagara.
  • (n.) The discharge of a river or current of water into the ocean, or into a lake or pond; as, the fall of the Po into the Gulf of Venice.
  • (n.) Extent of descent; the distance which anything falls; as, the water of a stream has a fall of five feet.
  • (n.) The season when leaves fall from trees; autumn.
  • (n.) That which falls; a falling; as, a fall of rain; a heavy fall of snow.
  • (n.) The act of felling or cutting down.
  • (n.) Lapse or declension from innocence or goodness. Specifically: The first apostasy; the act of our first parents in eating the forbidden fruit; also, the apostasy of the rebellious angels.
  • (n.) Formerly, a kind of ruff or band for the neck; a falling band; a faule.
  • (n.) That part (as one of the ropes) of a tackle to which the power is applied in hoisting.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) In the fall of 1975, 1,915 children in grades K through eight began a school-based program of supervised weekly rinsing with 0.2 percent aqueous solution of sodium fluoride in an unfluoridated community in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York.
  • (2) In all groups, there was a fall in labeling index with time reflecting increasing tumor size.
  • (3) McDonald said cutting better deals with suppliers and improving efficiency as well as raising some prices had only partly offset the impact of sterling’s fall against the dollar.
  • (4) In the clinical trials in which there was complete substitution of fat-modified ruminant foods for conventional ruminant products the fall in serum cholesterol was approximately 10%.
  • (5) Rise time and fall time constants have been quantified for describing kinetics of response.
  • (6) Elderly women need to follow the same strategies as postmenopausal women with more emphasis on prevention of falls.
  • (7) In the 153 women to whom iron supplements were given during pregnancy, the initial fall in haemoglobin concentration was less, was arrested by 28 weeks gestation and then rose to a level equivalent to the booking level.
  • (8) It is suggested that the rapid phase is due to clearance of peptides in the circulation which results in a fall to lower blood concentrations which are sustained by slow release of peptide from binding sites which act as a depot.
  • (9) Defibrotide prevents the dramatic fall of creatine phosphokinase activity in the ischemic ventricle: metabolic changes which reflect changes in the cells affected by prolonged ischemia.
  • (10) Though the 54-year-old designer made brief returns to the limelight after his fall from grace, designing a one-off collection for Oscar de la Renta last year , his appointment at Margiela marks a more permanent comeback.
  • (11) Addition of extracellular mevalonate led to a concentration-dependent fall in both processes, although a higher concentration was required to produce the same effect on LDL degradation as on HMG-CoA reductase activity.
  • (12) The fall of the cell number in the liquor cerebrospinalis was more rapidly in the GAGPS treatment.
  • (13) With fields and fells already saturated after more than four times the average monthly rainfall falling within the first three weeks of December, there was nowhere left to absorb the rainfall which has cascaded from fields into streams and rivers.
  • (14) The asthma group's fall in FEV1 was also abolished.
  • (15) Undaunted by the sickening swell of the ocean and wrapped up against the chilly wind, Straneo, of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, one of the world's leading oceanographic research centres, continues to take measurements from the waters as the long Arctic dusk falls.
  • (16) This transient paresis was accompanied by a dramatic fall in the MFCV concomitant with a shift of the power spectrum to the lower frequencies.
  • (17) As many girls as boys receive primary and secondary education, maternal mortality is lower and the birth rate is falling .
  • (18) Compliance during dehydration was 7.6 and 12.5% change in IFV per millimeter Hg fall in IFP (micropipettes) in skin and muscle, respectively, whereas compliance in subcutis based on perforated capsule pressure was 2.0% change in IFV per millimeter Hg.
  • (19) The fall of a tyrant is usually the cause of popular rejoicing followed by public vengeance.
  • (20) If women psychiatrists are to fill some of the positions in Departments of Psychiatry, which will fall vacant over the next decade, much more attention must be paid to eliminating or diminishing the multiple obstacles for women who chose a career in academic psychiatry.