infallibility
Americannoun
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Sometimes infallibleness the quality of being infallible, or of being absolutely trustworthy.
He believed in the infallibility of his leadership.
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Roman Catholic Church. immunity from fallacy or liability to error in expounding matters of faith or morals by virtue of the promise made by Christ to the Church.
papal infallibility.
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Etymology
Origin of infallibility
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Explanation
If you don't make mistakes and you're never wrong, you can claim infallibility. (You're going to have to own up to self-deception, too, because, well, humans make mistakes.) If you're convinced of the infallibility of your sense of direction, you won't worry at all when you're deep in the dark woods at night and your flashlight dies. Maybe you’ll get out of the woods, but human infallibility usually doesn’t last. You may buy into your economics professor's image of infallibility until he comes to class with mismatched socks and toothpaste on his forehead. Infallibility comes from the Latin fallere, "deceive," and with infallibility, you can't be deceived.
Vocabulary lists containing infallibility
1984
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Unit 1, Whole-Class Learning
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Later, recounting his fruitless sessions with his hopeless catechumen, Father Mowbray tells the matriarch how he tried to explain to Mottram the concept of papal infallibility:
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 22, 2026
North Korea is the world's most isolated country, a state based around the infallibility of Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and a deep suspicion of the outside world.
From BBC ● Aug. 12, 2024
Most famously, Ratzinger helped censure his friend Hans Kung, a Swiss theologian skeptical of the concept of papal infallibility.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2022
"I think the more we talk about this, the more people will doubt his honesty, his infallibility, and the less support he will have."
From Reuters ● Dec. 23, 2022
For the secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes.
From "1984" by George Orwell
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
