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fatal

adj
/ˈfeɪ.təl//ˈfeɪ.ɾɫ̩/US

Etymology

From Middle French fatal, from Latin fātālis (“fatal”).

  1. derived from fātālis — “fatal”
  2. derived from fatal

Definitions

  1. Proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny.

    • She mixed furniture with the same fatal profligacy as she mixed drinks, and this outrageous contact between things which were intended by Nature to be kept poles apart gave her an inexpressible thrill.

  2. Foreboding death or great disaster.

  3. Causing death or destruction.

    • a fatal wound; a fatal disease; that fatal day; a fatal mistake
    • Author Rita Mae Brown consistently strings together short comical movie clips which may be fine for screenplays but fatal in novels. Unfortunately, Toder chooses to imitate this model and her story suffers.
  4. ›+ 3 more definitions

    1. Causing a sudden end to the running of a program.

      • a fatal error; a fatal exception

    2. A fatality

      A fatality; an event that leads to death.

      • For this same period there have been four fatals and 44 nonfatals in gassy mines.
      • The best accident rate in general aviation is in corporate/executive flying at 0.17 per 100000 hours for fatals and .50 for total accidents.

    3. A fatal error

      A fatal error; a failure that causes a program to terminate.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at fatal. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01fatal02destruction03destroying04destroy05euthanize06euthanasia07killing

A definitional loop anchored at fatal. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

7 hops · closes at fatal

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA