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(), n.[OE. faut, faute, F. faute (cf. It., Sp., & Pg. falta), fr. a verb meaning to want, fail, freq., fr. L. fallere to deceive. See Fail, and cf. Default.] 1. Defect; want; lack; default. One, it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend. Shak. 2. Anything that fails, that is wanting, or that impairs excellence; a failing; a defect; a blemish. As patches set upon a little breach Discredit more in hiding of the fault. Shak. 3. A moral failing; a defect or dereliction from duty; a deviation from propriety; an offense less serious than a crime. 4. (Geol. & Mining) (a) A dislocation of the strata of the vein. (b) In coal seams, coal rendered worthless by impurities in the seam; as, slate fault, dirt fault, etc. Raymond. 5. (Hunting) A lost scent; act of losing the scent. Ceasing their clamorous cry till they have singled, With much ado, the cold fault cleary out. Shak. 6. (Tennis) Failure to serve the ball into the proper court. At fault, unable to find the scent and conti Fault (), v. t.[imp. & p. p.Faulted; p. pr. & vb. n.Faulting.] 1. To charge with a fault; to accuse; to find fault with; to blame. [Obs.] For that I will not fault thee. Old Song. 2. (Geol.) 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. Fault v. i.To err; to blunder, to commit a fault; to do wrong. [Obs.] If after Samuel's death the people had asked of God a king, they had not faulted. Latimer. Fault n. 1. (Elec.) A defective point in an electric circuit due to a crossing of the parts of the conductor, or to contact with another conductor or the earth, or to a break in the circuit. 2. (Geol. & Mining) A dislocation caused by a slipping of rock masses along a plane of facture; also, the dislocated structure resulting from such slipping. The surface along which the dislocated masses have moved is called the fault plane. When this plane is vertical, the fault is a vertical fault; when its inclination is such that the present relative position of the two masses could have been produced by the sliding down, along the fault plane, of the mass on its upper side, the fault is a normal, or gravity, fault. When the fault plane is so inclined that the mass on its upper side has moved up relatively, the fault is then called a reverse (or reversed), thrust, or overthrust, fault. If no vertical displacement has resulted, the fault is then called a horizontal fault. The linear extent of the dislocation measured スポンサード リンク
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