To blame, to find fault with. English examples dating from 1559, N.E.D.
1820. The omission of the Article of Christ’s descent into Hell was the thing principally faulted.—Bishop White’s ‘Memoirs of the P.E. Church,’ p. 116.
1841. I do not desire to fault the present Executive, or that it should be faulted by the next Administration.—Mr. Everett of Vermont in the House of Representatives, Feb. 13: Cong. Globe, p. 376, App.
1851. [That picter] I faults in only wun purtickler—it’s got a punchun fence in the place of a rale one—which I never seed a punchun fence in my life except round a garding.—J. J. Hooper, ‘Adventures of Captain Simon Suggs,’ &c., p. 141 (Phila.).
1851. “Suggs is a nice man in his talk,” she said. “Nobody can fault him, as far as that’s concerned; but smooth talk never paid for flour and bacon.”—The same, ‘Widow Rugby’s Husband,’ &c., pp. 18–9 (Phila.).
1857. When faulting me they were the branches that had withered, and the sap, the nourishment, was not in them, for while indulging in those feelings it had withdrawn to Him who gave it.—H. C. Kimball at the Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Jan. 25: ‘Journal of Discourses,’ iv. 274.
1907. We are aware that this has been faulted as a mere Americanism.—Church Standard, Phila., July 27.
1907. The Bishop of Porto Rico is faulted for inviting Presbyterian, Methodist, and Lutheran ministers to speak at the opening of a new church at San Juan.—Id., Nov. 30.
