"fall foul" meaning in All languages combined

See fall foul on Wiktionary

Verb [English]

Audio: en-au-fall foul.ogg [Australia] Forms: falls foul [present, singular, third-person], falling foul [participle, present], fell foul [past], fallen foul [participle, past]
Head templates: {{en-verb|fall<,,fell,fallen> foul}} fall foul (third-person singular simple present falls foul, present participle falling foul, simple past fell foul, past participle fallen foul)
  1. (idiomatic, archaic) To collide; to conflict with; to attack (+ on, of, upon) Tags: archaic, idiomatic
    Sense id: en-fall_foul-en-verb-d~JmJ9nW Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 45 55
  2. (idiomatic) To be defeated or thwarted (by); to suffer (+ of) Tags: idiomatic
    Sense id: en-fall_foul-en-verb-NFaOazZ~ Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 45 55

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for fall foul meaning in All languages combined (3.1kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "falls foul",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "falling foul",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fell foul",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fallen foul",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "fall<,,fell,fallen> foul"
      },
      "expansion": "fall foul (third-person singular simple present falls foul, present participle falling foul, simple past fell foul, past participle fallen foul)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "45 55",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To collide; to conflict with; to attack (+ on, of, upon)"
      ],
      "id": "en-fall_foul-en-verb-d~JmJ9nW",
      "links": [
        [
          "collide",
          "collide"
        ],
        [
          "attack",
          "attack"
        ],
        [
          "on",
          "on"
        ],
        [
          "of",
          "of"
        ],
        [
          "upon",
          "upon"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, archaic) To collide; to conflict with; to attack (+ on, of, upon)"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "archaic",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "45 55",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2008, The Guardian, Media Monkey, 4 Aug 2008",
          "text": "Sky News fell foul of its own woolly reporting on Tuesday, when it reported \"human remains\" had been found on Saddleworth Moor. Ever keen to spin a good yarn, they immediately linked the story to moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley - only for the police to emerge seven hours later and announce that, after very careful inspection, they could confirm the carcass was not human …"
        },
        {
          "ref": "March 11 2022, David Hytner, “Chelsea are in crisis but there is no will to leave club on their knees”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "If Chelsea were to fall foul of profit and sustainability, they would be expected to cite unforeseen circumstances, much as some clubs have claimed Covid writedowns: their books would have been sound but for the pandemic.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 July 26, Christian Wolmar, “Closing ticket offices to lead to 'catch-22' for passengers”, in RAIL, number 988, page 42",
          "text": "Passengers may find themselves in a catch-22 situation, unable to buy a ticket for any number of reasons, ranging from an out-of-order ticket vending machine to a lengthy queue to use one, and yet then fall foul of the penalty fare regime.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To be defeated or thwarted (by); to suffer (+ of)"
      ],
      "id": "en-fall_foul-en-verb-NFaOazZ~",
      "links": [
        [
          "thwarted",
          "thwarted"
        ],
        [
          "suffer",
          "suffer"
        ],
        [
          "of",
          "of"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To be defeated or thwarted (by); to suffer (+ of)"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-fall foul.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/35/En-au-fall_foul.ogg/En-au-fall_foul.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/En-au-fall_foul.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "fall foul"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English terms with audio links",
    "English verbs"
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "falls foul",
      "tags": [
        "present",
        "singular",
        "third-person"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "falling foul",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "present"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fell foul",
      "tags": [
        "past"
      ]
    },
    {
      "form": "fallen foul",
      "tags": [
        "participle",
        "past"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "fall<,,fell,fallen> foul"
      },
      "expansion": "fall foul (third-person singular simple present falls foul, present participle falling foul, simple past fell foul, past participle fallen foul)",
      "name": "en-verb"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "verb",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with archaic senses"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To collide; to conflict with; to attack (+ on, of, upon)"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "collide",
          "collide"
        ],
        [
          "attack",
          "attack"
        ],
        [
          "on",
          "on"
        ],
        [
          "of",
          "of"
        ],
        [
          "upon",
          "upon"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, archaic) To collide; to conflict with; to attack (+ on, of, upon)"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "archaic",
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "2008, The Guardian, Media Monkey, 4 Aug 2008",
          "text": "Sky News fell foul of its own woolly reporting on Tuesday, when it reported \"human remains\" had been found on Saddleworth Moor. Ever keen to spin a good yarn, they immediately linked the story to moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley - only for the police to emerge seven hours later and announce that, after very careful inspection, they could confirm the carcass was not human …"
        },
        {
          "ref": "March 11 2022, David Hytner, “Chelsea are in crisis but there is no will to leave club on their knees”, in The Guardian",
          "text": "If Chelsea were to fall foul of profit and sustainability, they would be expected to cite unforeseen circumstances, much as some clubs have claimed Covid writedowns: their books would have been sound but for the pandemic.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2023 July 26, Christian Wolmar, “Closing ticket offices to lead to 'catch-22' for passengers”, in RAIL, number 988, page 42",
          "text": "Passengers may find themselves in a catch-22 situation, unable to buy a ticket for any number of reasons, ranging from an out-of-order ticket vending machine to a lengthy queue to use one, and yet then fall foul of the penalty fare regime.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "To be defeated or thwarted (by); to suffer (+ of)"
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "thwarted",
          "thwarted"
        ],
        [
          "suffer",
          "suffer"
        ],
        [
          "of",
          "of"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) To be defeated or thwarted (by); to suffer (+ of)"
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "en-au-fall foul.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/3/35/En-au-fall_foul.ogg/En-au-fall_foul.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/En-au-fall_foul.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "fall foul"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-12 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (ae36afe and 304864d). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.