Meaning & use
fatal
Last updated
Meanings
adjectivecomparable
Resulting in someone's death, or capable of killing.
Grammar: Usually before a noun (a fatal crash) or after be (the injury was fatal).
Patterns
- fatal to someone
- a fatal accident
The driver survived, but the collision was fatal for his passenger.
A fatal dose of the poison is surprisingly small.
Doctors said the infection could be fatal if untreated.
adjectivecomparablefigurative
Causing complete failure or ruin, so that something cannot recover.
Grammar: Often followed by to: a mistake fatal to the plan.
Patterns
- fatal to something
- a fatal flaw
One fatal error in the contract ruined the whole deal.
The scandal proved fatal to his political career.
Overconfidence was the team's fatal weakness.
Common combinations
- fatal accident
- The road was closed after a fatal accident near the bridge.
- fatal flaw
- The plan's fatal flaw was that no one had checked the budget.
- fatal mistake
- Leaving the gate open was a fatal mistake.
- prove fatal
- A single wrong move can prove fatal in this game.
- fatal to
- The delay was fatal to our chances.
Synonyms and how they differ
- deadly
- Deadly describes something that is able to kill, while fatal often describes something that actually did kill.
- lethal
- Lethal stresses killing power, as in a lethal weapon, and sounds more technical than fatal.
- disastrous
- Disastrous means very harmful without implying death, so it is broader than fatal.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: fatal or fateful?
fatal vs fateful
Fateful means having important, often unfortunate, consequences, but it does not mean causing death.
Practice
The mistake was ____ to the company's reputation, and it never recovered.
Choose one answer.
Fatal to means causing complete ruin. Fateful would describe a decisive moment but not total ruin, and the other options have the wrong grammatical form.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “fatal”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.