Fail Brilliantly by Shelley Davidow

Author:Shelley Davidow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Familius
Published: 2017-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

The Language of Failure

In 2013, the second–most used word on the internet was “fail” after error code 404, which means the same thing:

404 is the near-universal numeric code for failure on the global Internet, augmenting its original use as “page not found.” The single word fail is often used together with 404 to signify complete failure of an effort, project, or endeavor.1

The term 404 actually refers to a room number—it was in room 404 on the fourth floor that the first database, which was to become the World Wide Web, found its early home at CERN in Switzerland. Here, a group of enthusiastic young scientists and entrepreneurs created the error code way back in the dark ages of the 1990s.2 The world has added another connotation to the word failure, which has steadily been shifting in meaning for centuries. If we’re writing a whole book devoted to exploding the myth of failure, it makes sense to investigate the language of failure and the word itself, which have become a pervasive part of our lives.

A Brief History of Failure

Of the more than one million words in use in the English language and the almost 600 million people writing English content on the internet, fail and the concept of failure currently top the charts!

The word fail emerged in the 1200s from Old French falir, which meant “to be lacking,” “to come to an end,” “to be dying,” or “let down” and from the Latin fallere, which meant “to trip” or “cause to fall” in a literal sense and “to trick, dupe, cheat, be defective” in the figurative. Before the 1200s, the Old English word had been abreoðan, which meant “to perish” or “to be destroyed.” From about the early 1300s, the word fail meant “to run short of” and was used only to refer to goods, things, and foods. Beyond the mid-1300s, the word fail expanded to the failure of things and objects and meant “break down” or “go to pieces.” After the 1300s, the word sometimes referred to human experiences as well and meant “to suffer loss of vigour,” to “fail in courage,” or to “fail in strength.” It was in the late 1200s that the Anglo-French version of the word, failer, began to be used as the noun failure. Only in 1837 did the word come to be used as a broad term that defined a person, as in “he was a total failure.”3

This is significant because we can see over time how the word failure has evolved and shifted in its meaning and observe how it has entered the twenty-first century and the significant role it plays in all our lives. Less than two hundred years ago, you could not be termed a “failure.” Now we’re almost glued to the concept of being a success or a failure.

As we know, every living species has been competing and winning and losing the battle to exist for the whole of evolution. This pattern of trial and error is the model that underpins everything.

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