Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Causing or capable of causing death.
  • adjective Causing ruin or destruction; disastrous.
  • adjective Of decisive importance; fateful.
  • adjective Concerning or determining one's fate.
  • adjective Obsolete Having been destined; fated.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • 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.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective rare Proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny; necessary; inevitable.
  • adjective rare Foreboding death or great disaster.
  • adjective Causing death or destruction; deadly; mortal; destructive; calamitous

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Proceeding from, or appointed by, fate or destiny.
  • adjective Foreboding death or great disaster.
  • adjective Causing death or destruction
  • adjective computing Causing a sudden end to a program.
  • noun A fatality; an event that leads to death.
  • noun computing A fatal error; a failure that causes a program to terminate.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective controlled or decreed by fate; predetermined
  • adjective bringing death
  • adjective having momentous consequences; of decisive importance
  • adjective (of events) having extremely unfortunate or dire consequences; bringing ruin

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, fateful, from Old French, from Latin fātālis, from fātum, prophecy, doom; see fate.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin fātālis ("fatal").

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Examples

  • This is what I call a fatal flaw for this candidate.

    Hillary in a Lie To Make Headlines 2008

  • 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.

    Court Memoirs of France Series — Complete Various

  • 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.

    Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine 1896

  • 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.

    Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine 1896

  • 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.

    Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero W. Warde Fowler 1884

  • 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.

    Yahoo! News: Business - Opinion 2010

  • 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.

    The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz — Complete [Historic court memoirs] Jean Fran��ois Paul de Gondi de Retz 1646

  • 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.

    The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz — Volume 3 [Historic court memoirs] Jean Fran��ois Paul de Gondi de Retz 1646

  • 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.

    A treatment for Ebola? ewillett 2010

  • 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.

    A treatment for Ebola? ewillett 2010

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