Word.ws English Dictionary

falling foul

falling foul is the present participle and gerund of fall foul.

Meaning of fall foul

Verb

fall foul (third-person singular simple present falls foul, present participle falling foul, simple past fell foul, past participle fallen foul)

  1. (archaic, idiomatic) To collide; to conflict with; to attack (+ on, of, upon)
    • If they be any ways offended, […]they fall foul.1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC
  2. (idiomatic) To be defeated or thwarted (by); to suffer (+ of)
    • Sky News fell foul of its own woolly reporting on Tuesday, when it reported "human remains" had been found on Saddleworth Moor. Ever keen to spin a good yarn, they immediately linked the story to moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley - only for the police to emerge seven hours later and...2008, The Guardian, Media Monkey, 4 Aug 2008

Questions about falling foul

What is falling foul the present participle and gerund of?
Falling foul is the present participle and gerund of fall foul.

Words near falling foul in the dictionary

  1. falling down on
  2. falling due
  3. falling flat
  4. falling flat on one's face
  5. falling for
  6. falling foul
  7. falling from grace
  8. falling ill
  9. falling in
  10. falling in line
  11. falling in love

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: falling foul (page history and authors); fall foul (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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