What's the difference between downfall and lapse?

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”.

Lapse


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To become ineffectual or void; to fall.
  • (v. i.) To fall or pass from one proprietor to another, or from the original destination, by the omission, negligence, or failure of some one, as a patron, a legatee, etc.
  • (n.) A gliding, slipping, or gradual falling; an unobserved or imperceptible progress or passing away,; -- restricted usually to immaterial things, or to figurative uses.
  • (n.) A slip; an error; a fault; a failing in duty; a slight deviation from truth or rectitude.
  • (n.) The termination of a right or privilege through neglect to exercise it within the limited time, or through failure of some contingency; hence, the devolution of a right or privilege.
  • (n.) A fall or apostasy.
  • (v. i.) To pass slowly and smoothly downward, backward, or away; to slip downward, backward, or away; to glide; -- mostly restricted to figurative uses.
  • (v. i.) To slide or slip in moral conduct; to fail in duty; to fall from virtue; to deviate from rectitude; to commit a fault by inadvertence or mistake.
  • (v. t.) To let slip; to permit to devolve on another; to allow to pass.
  • (v. t.) To surprise in a fault or error; hence, to surprise or catch, as an offender.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We had a brief conversation and I said to him he was acting from high honour here, and I said how sorry I was this wasn’t happening in three or four years time..because Barry is a man of honour..and I think he is a very capable premier and I think he has been missed.” Asked whether he had ever met Nick di Girolamo , the prime minister said both he and Mr di Girolamo attended a lot of functions, and “I don’t for a moment say I have never met him but I don’t recall it.” But former federal Liberal MP Ross Cameron sounded much more sceptical about O’Farrell’s memory lapse when speaking to Sky News.
  • (2) The duration and severity of the pulmonary abscess, the method of surgical treatment, the lapse of time after the operation, the course of the restorative processes, complications and concomitant diseases, the degree or respiratory and circulatory insufficiency, the patients' age, profession, and the conditions and character of work are taken into account during examination.
  • (3) In nine patients there was a temporary lapse of supervision.
  • (4) If REpower had waited until it had secured planning permission for the windfarms before it began building the turbine factory, permission would have lapsed before it had had time to supply the turbines.
  • (5) He cited the occurrence in 2011–12 of 326 "never events" – serious safety lapses that should never occur in the NHS, such as surgeons operating on the wrong part of a patient's body – as further proof that the NHS's safety culture was inadequate.
  • (6) Increases in mutant frequency were clearly induced by all eight chemicals, the magnitudes of which were dependent on the chemical, dose, method of dosing, tissue analyzed, and the time lapse between treatment and isolation of DNA.
  • (7) We report observations from time-lapse films of the development of Dictyostelium discoideum (Dd) stained with the vital dye neutral red.
  • (8) (c) In patients with MR and postoperative heart failure, there was a tendency for EF to decrease after a lapse of one month postoperatively.
  • (9) Analysis by time-lapse video microscopy indicates that two processes produce the fibers.
  • (10) In view of the prolonged lapse of time between the initial endocrine manifestations and the eventual diagnosis, even though no cause is apparent in the other three patients, it is suggested that close follow-up be carried out to rule out such a possibility in patients with this endocrine-radiological entity.
  • (11) Quantitative time-lapse videomicroscopy showed that the CT-induced retraction of osteoclasts also involved activation of the PKC pathway and could therefore be induced by phorbol esters.
  • (12) It’s just been a catalogue of disasters – the late nomination, when his party membership lapsed , the [alleged] punch-up.
  • (13) Time-lapse cinemicrography reveals that in clone B ZR-75-1 cells, which are not sensitive to the DNA synthesis-inhibitory effect of IL-6 or to its cell-separating effect on preformed colonies, IL-6 can still block rapid readherence of post-mitotic cells to their neighbors and to the substratum leading to enhanced dispersal of cancer cells into the culture medium.
  • (14) A vertebral occlusion or dissection is a problem of considerable complexity, requiring individualized management depending on the patient's symptomatology, location and nature of the injury, and time lapsed since the injury.
  • (15) On the day I arrive a time lapse of cloud is drifting across the ridge, above a geometry of Inca stairways and terraces cut into a steep, jungly spur above the Apurímac river, 100 miles west of Cusco in southern Peru.
  • (16) We have used fluorescence analogue cytochemistry in conjunction with time lapse recording to study the dynamics of alpha-actinin, a major component of the Z line, during myofibrillogenesis.
  • (17) Measurements of the soluble TNF receptor (sTNF-R) concentrations in healthy individuals at time lapses of 3 months (17 individuals) or 1 year (51 individuals) showed a significant correlation between the first and the second measurements from each individual, implying that individual differences are stable.
  • (18) The dynamic nature of Chlamydia trachomatis inclusions was studied by video and 35 mm time-lapse photomicrography of live cells, and by immunolocalization of inclusions in fixed cells.
  • (19) The authors report on the frequency of family congenital heart disease in a consecutive series of 380 congenital patients, studied in the lapse of one year in the Pediatric Cardiology Service of the National Institute of Cardiology of Mexico.
  • (20) A time lapse cinemicrographic study shows that, at low concentrations, nicotine can speed up cytokinesis and, at high concentrations, prolong the duration of metaphase in HeLa cells.