Word.ws English Dictionary

falling at the last hurdle

falling at the last hurdle is the present participle and gerund of fall at the last hurdle.

Meaning of fall at the last hurdle

Verb

fall at the last hurdle (third-person singular simple present falls at the last hurdle, present participle falling at the last hurdle, simple past fell at the last hurdle, past participle fallen at the last hurdle)

  1. (idiomatic, intransitive) To fail near the end of an activity, a project, etc.
    • [W]hen she [Psyche] falls at her last hurdle, it is through her own act, motivated by the identical combination of curiositas and simplicitas that has been her undoing from the start.[1990, E[dward] J[ohn] Kenney, “Introduction”, in Apuleius, edited by E. J. Kenney, Cupid & Psyche (Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics; Imperial Library), Cambridge, Cambridgeshire; New York, N.Y....
    Synonyms:
    fall at the final hurdle, fall at the last

Questions about falling at the last hurdle

What is falling at the last hurdle the present participle and gerund of?
Falling at the last hurdle is the present participle and gerund of fall at the last hurdle.

Words near falling at the last hurdle in the dictionary

  1. falling apart
  2. falling around
  3. falling asleep
  4. falling asleep in the Lord
  5. falling at the final hurdle
  6. falling at the last hurdle
  7. falling away
  8. falling back
  9. falling back into
  10. falling back on
  11. falling back upon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: falling at the last hurdle (page history and authors); fall at the last hurdle (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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