Meaning & use
Malfunctioned
Last updated
Failed to work correctly or stopped functioning as intended.
See it in a sentence
The smoke detector malfunctioned and went off in the middle of the night for no reason.
Engineers traced the crash to a sensor that had malfunctioned mid-flight.
A note on using this word
Formed from 'mal-' (bad) plus 'function,' and used almost exclusively for machines, devices, or systems rather than people.
Words with a similar meaning
broke downglitchedfailed
Choose a synonym to suit the sentence. Meanings can overlap without being identical.
Words with an opposite meaning
functionedworked
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