Definitions

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Falling down.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective falling downward
  • noun An act of falling downward.
  • noun A downfall.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

down +‎ falling

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Examples

  • I was tossed through the air like a chip and buried ignominiously under the downfalling breaker.

    Excerpt From Cruise of the Snark: Surfing in Hawaii 2010

  • The glowing greenish gauze was in a ferment, bubbling, uprearing, downfalling, and tentatively thrusting huge bodiless hands into the upper ether.

    CHAPTER 18 2010

  • And suddenly, out there where a big smoker lifts skyward, rising like a sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning white, on the giddy, toppling, overhanging and downfalling, precarious crest appears the dark head of a man.

    Excerpt From Cruise of the Snark: Surfing in Hawaii 2010

  • And while it passes, Louis, we are aware of downfalling, we forebode decay.

    The Waves 2003

  • Where it met the surface, a disturbance arose, and a familiar sight climbed back up the beam: the splashing, outward-spraying point of contact between the downfalling jet and a new one spraying upward at the same angle from the same point.

    Alliance Oltion, Jerry 1990

  • Palmists or clairvoyants would prophesy a future for her, simply through looking in her eyes; but whether notoriety is to be won by downfalling or uprising were better left unstated.

    When the Birds Begin to Sing Harold Piffard

  • And suddenly, out there where a big smoker lifts skyward, rising like a sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning white, on the giddy, toppling, overhanging and downfalling, precarious crest appears the dark head of a man.

    Chapter 6 1913

  • I was tossed through the air like a chip and buried ignominiously under the downfalling breaker.

    Chapter 6 1913

  • I was tossed through the air like a chip and buried ignominiously under the downfalling breaker.

    Chapter 6 1911

  • And suddenly, out there where a big smoker lifts skyward, rising like a sea-god from out of the welter of spume and churning white, on the giddy, toppling, overhanging and downfalling, precarious crest appears the dark head of a man.

    Chapter 6 1911

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