Faulty

How to spell faulty

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce faulty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does faulty mean?

1. adjectiveHaving a defect or fault, so that it does not work properly or is unreliable.

Faulty in a sentence

• The shop refunded the money for the faulty kettle.

• Engineers traced the blackout to a faulty wire in the basement.

Where does faulty come from?

Language of origin: French

This adjective is built on the noun 'fault', which English took from Old French 'faute', meaning a lack, a failing, or a shortcoming. The Old French word descended from an unrecorded Vulgar Latin 'fallita', itself rooted in the Latin verb 'fallere', meaning 'to deceive' or 'to fail'. For centuries the English word was written and spoken without an 'l', closer to its French shape, but scholars during the Renaissance reinserted the 'l' to echo the Latin original, and eventually people began pronouncing it too. The simple adjective ending '-y' was added to mean 'having defects', so 'faulty' literally describes something full of failings. That restored Latin 'l' is the heart of the spelling trap, since the 'au' before it can be hard to place from sound alone.

How the word is built

• fault (a defect or flaw)
• -y (adjective suffix, meaning 'having or full of')