Also 4 failand, faylande, Sc. falȝeand. [f. as prec. + -ING2.]
1. That fails, in the senses of the vb.
a. 1300. Cursor Mundi, 28844 (Cott.). Failand frute comis o þat tan.
c. 1375. Sc. Leg. Saints, Andreas, 961.
| And fore þis Joy falȝeand þu | |
| Ay-lestand Joy has chosine nov. |
1435. Misyn, Fire of Loue (E.E.T.S.), 9. Þingis transitory & faylynge.
1667. Milton, P. L., IX. 404. O … much failing, hapless Eve.
1719. De Foe, Crusoe (1840), II. xiv. 293. My never-failing old pilot … had a pistol.
1879. Froude, Cæsar, xiv. 204. Had the spades and mattocks been supplied by contract, had the axes been of soft iron, fair to the eye and failing to the stroke, not a man in Cæsar’s army would have returned to Rome to tell the tale of its destruction.
1885. Law Times’ Rep., LII. 648/2. Plowright was … in failing health.
† 2. Astron. Of a planet: Remote from some fixed point. Obs.
c. 1391. Chaucer, Astrol., II. § 4. If [a planet] passe the bondes of thise forseide spaces, a-boue or by-nethe … they sein þat the planete is failling fro the assendent.
Hence Failingly adv., Failingness.
1631. Mabbe, Celestina, IV. 49. That failingnesse of force and of strength?
1847. Craig, Failingly, by failing.
1880. M. Crommelin, Black Abbey, I. xii. 163. The poor Tom-boy … struggled, failingly, to join in Hector’s ever-manlier pursuits.
