What's the difference between fail and literal?

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  • (v. i.) Miscarriage; failure; deficiency; fault; -- mostly superseded by failure or failing, except in the phrase without fail.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.

Literal


Definition:

  • (a.) According to the letter or verbal expression; real; not figurative or metaphorical; as, the literal meaning of a phrase.
  • (a.) Following the letter or exact words; not free.
  • (a.) Consisting of, or expressed by, letters.
  • (a.) Giving a strict or literal construction; unimaginative; matter-of fast; -- applied to persons.
  • (n.) Literal meaning.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) They are just literally lying.” In August Microsoft severed its ties, saying Alec’s stance on climate change and several other issues “conflicted directly with Microsoft’s values”.
  • (2) Estimated fluid consumption dropped from 10 liters to 4 liters daily and incidents of hyponatremia decreased by 62%.
  • (3) Resting plasma epinephrine and norepinephrine levels were 13.1 and 2.1 nmol liter-1 for the marine toad (Bufo marinus).
  • (4) And we literally had hundreds of thousands of them."
  • (5) Standard additions are unnecessary; Pt concentrations are read from a calibration chart of peak heights, which is linear up to 1.6 mg per liter.
  • (6) Communication issues in obtaining organ donation consent were examined, with particular focus on what are literally life-and-death decisions.
  • (7) It could still be terrorism but it looks as if the aircraft went out of control because the controls were literally burning up.
  • (8) A novel vector was employed which permits rapid and highly efficient cleavage of the GST fusion protein yielding 10 mg of purified PurH product per liter of bacterial culture.
  • (9) You literally never see that at political rallies, though obviously at Tea Party ones they are there all the time."
  • (10) An empirical rate expression was developed from experimental data which led to a prediction that the natural rate of oxidation in the ocean is about 0.023 micromoles of As(III) per liter each year.
  • (11) A technology for preparation of purified concentrates of rabies virus has been developed permitting to use simultaneously dozens of liters of tissue culture virus-containing fluid for the preparation of a concentrate.
  • (12) The maximum effect was obtained with 10(-7) molar gibberellic acid, whereas concentrations greater than 5 x 10(-7) mole per liter were inhibitory.
  • (13) Years ahead of its time, it saw each song presented theatrically, the musicians concealed in the wings (although Bowie said that they kept creeping on to the stage, literally unable to resist the spotlight) and with Bowie performing on a cherry-picker and on a giant hand, both of which kept breaking down.
  • (14) Some women attended the protest wearing jeans and T-shirts, while others took the mission of reclaiming the word "slut" – one of the stated objectives of the movement – more literally and turned out in overtly provocative fishnets and stilettos.
  • (15) But nobody got the reference and "the next day it was literally on CNN".
  • (16) 1.57pm BST Lap 36: Punchy stuff from Jules Bianchi up to 13th, literally bumping his way through Kobayashi on the inside.
  • (17) The majority of children came from low socio-economic homes (61%) with mostly illiterate or semi-literate mothers.
  • (18) As compared with the normoglycemic patients, the patients with hypoglycemia had elevated median plasma concentrations of glucagon (44 vs. 11 pmol per liter; P = 0.001), epinephrine (3400 vs. 1500 pmol per liter; P = 0.012), norepinephrine (7500 vs. 2900 pmol per liter; P = 0.002), and lactate (3.5 vs. 2.1 mmol per liter; P = 0.020) and similar alanine and beta-hydroxybutyrate concentrations.
  • (19) Finally, poliovirus experimentally seeded in 20 liters of tape water was recovered from Johns-Manville D79-Johns-Manville D39 or Johns-Manville D79-Filterite 0.45 micron 142-mm filter combinations was a efficiencies of 86 and 85%, respectively.
  • (20) Results concerning existence and uniqueness of equilibria, stability of the equilibria, and boundedness of solutions suggest that "compensatory" systems might not be compensatory in the literal sense.