What's the difference between fail and lapse?

Fail


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To be wanting; to fall short; to be or become deficient in any measure or degree up to total absence; to cease to be furnished in the usual or expected manner, or to be altogether cut off from supply; to be lacking; as, streams fail; crops fail.
  • (v. i.) To be affected with want; to come short; to lack; to be deficient or unprovided; -- used with of.
  • (v. i.) To fall away; to become diminished; to decline; to decay; to sink.
  • (v. i.) To deteriorate in respect to vigor, activity, resources, etc.; to become weaker; as, a sick man fails.
  • (v. i.) To perish; to die; -- used of a person.
  • (v. i.) To be found wanting with respect to an action or a duty to be performed, a result to be secured, etc.; to miss; not to fulfill expectation.
  • (v. i.) To come short of a result or object aimed at or desired ; to be baffled or frusrated.
  • (v. i.) To err in judgment; to be mistaken.
  • (v. i.) To become unable to meet one's engagements; especially, to be unable to pay one's debts or discharge one's business obligation; to become bankrupt or insolvent.
  • (v. t.) To be wanting to ; to be insufficient for; to disappoint; to desert.
  • (v. t.) To miss of attaining; to lose.
  • (v. i.) Miscarriage; failure; deficiency; fault; -- mostly superseded by failure or failing, except in the phrase without fail.
  • (v. i.) Death; decease.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Intrathecal injection of zopiclone potentiated morphine antinociception, while the intracerebroventricular injection of zopiclone failed to enhance morphine antinociception and the intracerebroventricular injection of flumazepil to antagonize the intraperitoneal-zopiclone-induced increase in morphine antinociception.
  • (2) However, ticks, which failed to finish their feeding and represent a disproportionately great part of the whole parasite's population, die together with them and the parasitic system quickly restores its stability.
  • (3) The inquiry found the law enforcement agencies routinely fail to record the professions of those whose communications data records they access under Ripa.
  • (4) It is suggested that the normal cyclical release of LH is inhibited in PCO disease by a negative feedback by androgens to the hypothalamus or the pituitary, and that wedge resection should be reserved for patients in whom other forms of treatment have failed.
  • (5) Endoscopic retrograde cholangiography failed to demonstrate any bile ducts in the right postero-lateral segments of the liver, the "naked segment sign".
  • (6) Several efforts to extradite Polanski to California have failed.
  • (7) Administration of aminonucleoside and daunomycin produced proteinuria but did not cause a decrease in lipid P. Anticollagen and anti-lymphocyte sera that attached to the basement membrane but failed to produce proteinuria, also failed to affect the phospholipid content.
  • (8) An official inquiry into the Rotherham abuse scandal blamed failings by Rotherham council and South Yorkshire police.
  • (9) Amid the acrimony of the failed debate on the Malaysia Agreement, something was missed or forgotten: many in the left had changed their mind.
  • (10) Four of the nine patients failed to show any clinical or hematological improvement.
  • (11) In cases in which CT was also performed, it revealed corresponding hypodensities in two infarctions, but failed to reveal the foci of gliosis (or noncavital infarction), demyelination, or brain cyst.
  • (12) Even in the failed cases, 25-42% of subjects considered the treatment as good.
  • (13) Dzeko he has failed to hold down a starting berth since his £27m move in January 2011.
  • (14) Prothrombin isolation on DEAE Sephadex failed to separate the abnormal population (prothrombin Clamart) from the normal one.
  • (15) The starting point is the idea that the current system, because it works against biodiversity but fails to increase productivity, is broken.
  • (16) Other than failing to get a goal, I couldn’t ask for anything more.” From Lambert’s perspective there was an element of misfortune about the first and third goals, with Willian benefitting from handy ricochets on both occasions.
  • (17) In contrast, albino rats and rabbits failed to succumb to overt disease by subcutaneous and intraperitoneal routes of inoculation.
  • (18) It was recently demonstrated that MRL-lpr lymphoid cells transferred into lethally irradiated MRL- +mice unexpectedly failed to induce the early onset of lupus syndrome and massive lymphadenopathy of the donor, instead they caused a severe wasting syndrome resembling graft-vs-host (GvH) disease.
  • (19) In the controlled wound care group, only three ulcers in three patients achieved complete healing; the remaining 24 ulcers in 20 patients failed to achieve even 50% healing in the stipulated 3-month period.
  • (20) The former Stoke City manager Pulis had reportedly been left frustrated by the club failing to push through deals for various players he targeted to strengthen the Palace squad.

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.