Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Causing or capable of causing death.
- adj. Causing ruin or destruction; disastrous: "Such doctrines, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory” ( Charles Darwin).
- adj. Of decisive importance; fateful: came through at the fatal moment.
- adj. Concerning or determining one's fate: the fatal thread of life.
- adj. Obsolete Having been destined; fated.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- 1. Proceeding from or decreed by fate or destiny; inevitable; fated.
- Fraught with fate; influencing or deciding fate; fateful.
- Foreboding or associated with disaster or death; ominous.
- Causing or attended with death or destruction; deadly; mortal; destructive; disastrous; ruinous: as, a fatal accident.
- Doomed; cursed.
Wiktionary
- adj. Proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny.
- adj. Foreboding death or great disaster.
- adj. Causing death or destruction
- adj. computing Causing a sudden end to a program.
- n. A fatality; an event that leads to death.
- n. computing A fatal error; a failure that causes a program to terminate.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. rare Proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny; necessary; inevitable.
- adj. rare Foreboding death or great disaster.
- adj. Causing death or destruction; deadly; mortal; destructive; calamitous.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. controlled or decreed by fate; predetermined.
- adj. bringing death
- adj. having momentous consequences; of decisive importance
- adj. (of events) having extremely unfortunate or dire consequences; bringing ruin
Etymologies
- From Latin fātālis ("fatal"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English, fateful, from Old French, from Latin fātālis, from fātum, prophecy, doom; see fate. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“This is what I call a fatal flaw for this candidate.”
“Cardinal, accused him of prevarication and weakness, and threw himself at her Majesty's feet, conjuring her in the name of the King her son, not to authorise, by an example which he called fatal, the insolence of a subject who was for wresting favours from his sovereign, sword in hand.”
“Prescott 12.195 reports a case of what he calls fatal colic from the lodgment of a chocolate-nut in the appendix; and Noyes 12.196 relates an instance of death in a man of thirty-one attributed to the presence of a raisin-seed in the vermiform appendix.”
“Prescott reports a case of what he calls fatal colic from the lodgment of a chocolate-nut in the appendix; and Noyes relates an instance of death in a man of thirty-one attributed to the presence of a raisin-seed in the vermiform appendix.”
“Page 340, footnote 3. _idem etiam_, etc.: he says also that Jupiter is the power of this law, eternal and immutable, which is the guide, so to speak, of our life and the principle of our duties; a law which he calls a fatal necessity, an eternal truth of future things.”
“In an interview with People magazine granted shortly after her husband made it through his famously contentious confirmation hearings, Ginni said, What [Anita Hill] did was so obviously political…Her allegations…remind me of the movie Fatal Attraction, or in her case, what I call the fatal assistant.”
“Eventually, vomiting, diarrhea and rash develop, the kidneys and liver may stop functioning, and, in fatal cases, uncontrollable internal and external bleeding begins, resulting in the vomiting of blood and bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose and other orifices.”
“Seat belt use is lowest among teens and young adults, and the majority of teens involved in fatal crashes are unbuckled.”
Consumer Reports: 2010 Teen Driver Safety Week: Reducing unnecessary deaths
“D minor for Rachmaninoff or Mozart is to express a certain fatal mood.”
The Wall Street Journal: Orchestrating an Extrasensory Sound in Living Color
“Recreational marijuana use in fatal crashes will increase if Prop. 19 passes.”
The Huffington Post: Prop 19 Opponents Veer Off Into Paranoia
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘fatal’.
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GRE 2014
abate, abdicate, abase, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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life, death, rebirth
vale of tears, aborning, transmigration, reincarnate, nativity, nascence, metempsychosis, palingenesis, againrising, psychopannychism, thnetopsychism, shuffle off this ... and 104 more...
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Ayumi G3
Ability, absorb, accuse, act, active, actual, adopt, advantage, advice, ambition, ancient, approach and 128 more...
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2
transition, contents, conformity, division, labour, prominent, complexity, interrelationalship, similarity, note, tentative, convey and 75 more...
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the brothers
factotem, extrapolation, antinomy, antenome, pusillanimous, capons, caftan, pejorative, cropper, cowl, perfidious, fichu and 138 more...
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Shadowkeir's list
This list, the one shown below this very message, is a collection of words that you cannot begin to fathom how much I adore. The list will also feature atithesis and contrasting words such as the t...
wishful, anticlimactic, forte, monchromatic, septic, wonderous, isoclinal, deformed, disintergrate, favourite, laughable, awe-inspiring and 250 more...
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No Dearth of Deadly Designations
catafalque, cenotaph, necropolis, sepulcher, sarcophagus, mausoleum, reliquary, ossuary, necrosis, cadaver, cadaverous, pyre and 103 more...
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africasunsets's list
serendipity, fragrance, glamour, smitten, nourish, lavish, luxury, wicked, gem, daring, soothe, fantasy and 192 more...
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Miss Sunshine
she's such a joy.
bereaved, bitter, cheerless, dejected, depressed, despairing, despondent, disconsolate, dismal, distressed, doleful, downcast and 405 more...
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GRE AWA
escalating, vehement, vehemence, hostility, paparazzi, regime, irrespective, scoop, exaggerated, overblown, unfetter, scrupulous and 272 more...
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Basic English Vocabulary
Very basic words for ESL students.
contemplate, container, consumer, consultant, consensus, conscious, conscience, connection, confusion, confront, conflict, confident and 4334 more...
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Misc. Words.
Words I like to use, words I like but may forget.
corrosion, astonish, solace, ferment, continuum, kinesthetic, permeate, repose, caprice, cardinal, discourse, surrender and 610 more...
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The "dark" things
grave, dead, death, die, died, dies, murder, murdered, murderer, murders, murdering, murderous and 115 more...
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The things they carried (List 2)
Listening to this as an audio book for the second time. Tim O'Brien uses simple words and phrases to great effect. Very few unfamilar and big words . The writing style reminds me of words from Joh...
The, Things, They, Carried, meant, fond, By necessity,, presented to him, far beyond, against the brick..., reaching, taut and 2940 more...
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Death, where is thy sting?
Death-related words and phrases.
rigor mortis, requiem, eulogy, hearse, kill, assassinate, mortified, murder, fatal, euthanasia, shuffle off this ..., breathe your last and 15 more...
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R/W Masters List #2
The Dare
shard, gravel, array, guerrilla, enigma, dare, whiff, gaze, boxcar, embrace, silhouette, fury and 29 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for fatal.
tbtabby Means "annoying" in German. Jul 13, 2009