Word.ws English Dictionary

downfal

downfal is the obsolete form of downfall.

Meaning of downfall

Noun

downfall (countable and uncountable, plural downfalls)

  1. A precipitous decline in fortune; death or rapid deterioration, as in status or wealth.
    • Many economic and political reasons led to the downfall of the Roman Empire.
    Synonyms:
    fall, doom
  2. The cause of such a fall; a critical blow or error.
    • Orson Scott Card
      It is the downfall of evil, that it never sees far enough ahead.
  3. An act of falling down.
    • a downfall of rain

See all 4 meanings of downfall

Forms of downfal

pluraldownfals

Questions about downfal

What is downfal the obsolete form of?
Downfal is the obsolete form of downfall.

Words near downfal in the dictionary

  1. Downeys
  2. downface
  3. downfaced
  4. downfaces
  5. downfacing
  6. downfal
  7. downfall
  8. downfallen
  9. downfalling
  10. downfallings
  11. downfalls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: downfal (page history and authors); downfall (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “downfal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/downfal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.