faulting

faulttop: normal faultcenter: reverse faultbottom: strike-slip fault

fault

F0053800 (fôlt)n.1. a. A character weakness, especially a minor one.b. Something that impairs or detracts from physical perfection; a defect. See Synonyms at blemish.c. A mistake; an error: a grammatical fault; a fault in his reasoning.d. A minor offense or misdeed: committed her share of youthful faults.2. Responsibility for a mistake or an offense; culpability. See Synonyms at blame.3. Geology A fracture in the continuity of a rock formation caused by a shifting or dislodging of the earth's crust, in which adjacent surfaces are displaced relative to one another and parallel to the plane of fracture. Also called shift.4. Electronics A defect in a circuit or wiring caused by imperfect connections, poor insulation, grounding, or shorting.5. Sports A service of the ball that violates the rules in tennis and similar games.6. Archaic A lack or deficiency.v. fault·ed, fault·ing, faults v.tr.1. To find error or defect in; criticize or blame: faulted the author for poor research; faulted the book for inaccuracies.2. Geology To produce a fault in; fracture.v.intr.1. To commit a mistake or an error.2. Geology To shift so as to produce a fault.3. Sports To commit a fault, as in tennis.Idioms: at fault1. Deserving of blame; guilty: admitted to being at fault.2. Confused and puzzled. find fault To seek, find, and complain about faults; criticize: found fault with his speech. to a fault To an excessive degree: generous to a fault.

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[Middle English faulte, from Old French, from Vulgar Latin *fallita, from variant of Latin falsa, feminine past participle of fallere, to deceive, fail.]

Thesaurus

Noun

1.

faulting - (geology) a crack in the earth's crust resulting from the displacement of one side with respect to the other; "they built it right over a geological fault"; "he studied the faulting of the earth's crust"geological fault, fracture, break, fault, shiftgeology - a science that deals with the history of the earth as recorded in rocksfault line - (geology) line determined by the intersection of a geological fault and the earth's surfacecrack, scissure, cleft, crevice, fissure - a long narrow openinginclined fault - a geological fault in which one side is above the otherstrike-slip fault - a geological fault in which one of the adjacent surfaces appears to have moved horizontally