What's the difference between fault and foible?

Fault


Definition:

  • (n.) Defect; want; lack; default.
  • (n.) Anything that fails, that is wanting, or that impairs excellence; a failing; a defect; a blemish.
  • (n.) A moral failing; a defect or dereliction from duty; a deviation from propriety; an offense less serious than a crime.
  • (n.) A dislocation of the strata of the vein.
  • (n.) In coal seams, coal rendered worthless by impurities in the seam; as, slate fault, dirt fault, etc.
  • (n.) A lost scent; act of losing the scent.
  • (n.) Failure to serve the ball into the proper court.
  • (v. t.) To charge with a fault; to accuse; to find fault with; to blame.
  • (v. t.) To interrupt the continuity of (rock strata) by displacement along a plane of fracture; -- chiefly used in the p. p.; as, the coal beds are badly faulted.
  • (v. i.) To err; to blunder, to commit a fault; to do wrong.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) If Cory Bernardi wasn’t currently in a period of radio silence as he contemplates his immediate political future he’d be all over this too, mining the Trumpocalypse – or in our domestic context, mining the fertile political fault line where Coalition support intersects with One Nation support.
  • (2) The most common seenario was a vehicle-vehicle collision in which seat belts were not used and the decedent or the decedent's driver was at fault.
  • (3) The venture capitalist argued in his report, commissioned by the Downing Street policy guru Steve Hilton, in favour of "compensated no fault-dismissal" for small businesses.
  • (4) As he told us: 'Individual faults and frailties are no excuse to give in and no exemption from the common obligation to give of ourselves.'
  • (5) Whatever their other faults, most Republicans running for office this year do not share Trump’s unwillingness to condemn the Ku Klux Klan.
  • (6) There could be no faulting the atmosphere or the football drama.
  • (7) People think it must be your fault that you’re in this position; it isn’t.
  • (8) Defense Mechanism Test applied to a subgroup of 20 patients suggested that high perceptual defense may be related to injury occurrence in patients at fault for the accident.
  • (9) Yes, if it helps kill the idea that autism is somebody's "fault".
  • (10) The SEM photographs demonstrated the faults which can be eliminated by the use of a stereomicroscope and showed also those which derive from the physical and chemical properties of the amalgam.
  • (11) He said the incident happened after Hookem told Woolfe it was his own fault he did not get his nomination papers in on time.
  • (12) The result is a very satisfactory isolation of the wound, eliminating faults in aseptic technique but requiring fresh sterilisation for each new procedure.
  • (13) Another issue that deserves attention is the impact on future generations, because biological faults introduced by the technique could be handed down from one generation to the next.
  • (14) I’m not someone to gloss over the BBC’s faults, problems or challenges – I see it as part of my job to identify and pursue them.
  • (15) Despite all these fault lines, China is not going to collapse; it is far too resilient for that.
  • (16) Proper provision of ground-fault circuit interrupter protection, particularly at temporary work sites, could have prevented most of the deaths from 110-volt AC.
  • (17) These achievements, and faults, will find stark contrast with Trump’s administration; certainly Trump’s nominations for key positions in his cabinet that relate to climate change have prompted alarm by experts and campaigners.
  • (18) Cameron did give ground by saying that "no fault dismissal" would only apply to micro companies and not to every employer in the country.
  • (19) The failures were mostly related to technical faults.
  • (20) These more complex units call for new methods of fault detection and diagnosis.

Foible


Definition:

  • (a.) Weak; feeble.
  • (n.) A moral weakness; a failing; a weak point; a frailty.
  • (n.) The half of a sword blade or foil blade nearest the point; -- opposed to forte.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Many of the patients anthropomorphise the seal, enjoy pretending that it is a real, living creature, with all the associated foibles.
  • (2) This week's edition of the FT's How to Spend It, suggests some Christmas foibles – £625 gloves, £705 Black Amber perfume, a £10,000 Boodles bangle.
  • (3) We're given a vivid description, details and foibles, before the town is populated with a cast of characters to rival any soap opera.
  • (4) If the mot juste was always a priority – "I suppose we all have our foibles.
  • (5) The sharp-witted late-night TV star, who regularly skewers the foibles of other celebrities, found himself on the end of the same treatment after being at the centre of a bizarre blackmail plot over the sexual affairs he had with younger female staff members.
  • (6) Children and their services have been prey to causes célèbres, fashion and the exaggerated fads and foibles of the media and politicians; they have thrived best when society and their carers were tolerant, and loving, sought good qualities to augment, not evil to exorcise, and succeeded in balancing structure and control with flexibility and freedom to grow.
  • (7) While cables exposing the foibles of Pakistan's civilian leaders triggered a media feeding frenzy, the press largely ignored revelations that cast the powerful military in a bad light, including its alleged support for Islamist extremist groups such as the Taliban.
  • (8) This is not about the exposure of one man's alleged foibles.
  • (9) We tend not to pin that badge on Ukip because of a paradoxical foible of Britishness that makes imagined immunity from aggressive identity politics a point of national pride.
  • (10) I'm afraid I didn't enjoy either Django Unchained or Inglourious Basterds – they were too self-reverential for my taste – but, as a writer, nobody in the world has a better ear for the foibles and vulnerabilities of his bad guys than Tarantino.
  • (11) Gray was as funny and vicious about his own haplessness as he was about the foibles of others.
  • (12) WS: That Bafta routine of yours in the show was the crux for me – a perfect exemplar of your character’s foibles, because the ambiguity is absolute: Does he care about not winning one or not?
  • (13) By contrast, this collection – which will be available online immediately and in shops in July – celebrated British foibles and eccentricities, in the animal-motif knitwear and eclectic mix of town and country fabrics.
  • (14) The well done steak is not simply a personal foible, like preferring pepperoni pizza to a margarita.
  • (15) And, for all his foibles, Mad-Eye Moody from Harry Potter is a man you'd follow, too.
  • (16) This essay on the last years of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's life exhibits all of Sebald's strengths as a writer – and all of his strange, gnomic, secretive foibles.
  • (17) For example, I've never heard him acknowledge that, in joking about Georgina Sachs's sexual foibles and menstrual cycle , he was demeaning to her.
  • (18) Over the years, scrutiny of Westminster has gradually come to rest on personal foibles, grudges and coups both real and imaginary - a kind of higher office-politics.
  • (19) The emphasis was always on the comedy, the foibles and peccadilloes of the characters, a gentle cynicism about the ways of the world, a joy in puns, a love of irritating footnotes, a relish for the bathetic puncturing of the bombastic – and above all an irrepressible and infectious silliness.
  • (20) None of us is free of foibles and peculiarities that the patient notices sooner or later.