[f. next + -ITY. Cf. F. faillibilité.] The state or fact of being fallible; liability to err or to mislead (in mod. usage limited to the former); an instance of the same.
1634. ‘E. Knott,’ in Chillingworth’s Relig. Prot., iv. § 14. Nothing of the Churches Visibility or Invisibility, Fallibility or Infallibility.
1677. Hale, The Primitive Origination of Mankind, II. i. 131. Those Evidences of Fact … have or may have their several allays and fallibilities.
1725. Watts, Logic, II. ix. 409. Tho’ there be a great deal of Fallibility in the Testimony of Men.
1775. Harris, Philos. Arrangem., Wks. (1841), 353. It is to the fallibility which sometimes attends this method of distinguishing, that we owe those proverbial sayings, ‘the cloak makes not the philosopher; the cowl makes not the monk.’
1840. Thackeray, Paris Sk.-bk. (1872), 216. Taking the fallibility of judges and lawyers into his hearts.
1859. Mill, On Liberty, i. 18. The fallibility of what is called the moral sense: for the odium theologicum, in a sincere bigot, is one of the most unequivocal cases of moral feeling.
