Word.ws English Dictionary

falling short

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

Meaning of fall short

Verb

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

  1. (idiomatic) To be less satisfactory than expected; to be inadequate or insufficient.
    • I did my best, but fell far short of the score cutoff.

Questions about falling short

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

Words near falling short in the dictionary

  1. falling outs
  2. falling over
  3. falling over oneself
  4. falling pregnant
  5. falling prey
  6. falling short
  7. falling sick
  8. falling sickness
  9. falling silent
  10. falling star
  11. falling stars

Source and license

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