Word.ws English Dictionary

falls foul

falls foul is the third-person singular simple present indicative 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 falls foul

What is falls foul the third-person singular simple present indicative of?
Falls foul is the third-person singular simple present indicative of fall foul.

Words near falls foul in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: falls 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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