Fail Whale

B1 8+

Pronunciation: /feɪl weɪl/

Definitions of fail whale

noun a humorous term used to describe the error message displayed on the Twitter website when it is overloaded or experiencing technical difficulties

Example Sentences

A1 The fail whale is a popular internet meme.

A2 When the website crashed, users were greeted with the fail whale.

B1 The fail whale appears when there is a server error.

B2 Many people find humor in the fail whale image.

C1 The fail whale has become a symbol of internet downtime.

C2 Some companies use the fail whale as a reminder to keep their servers running smoothly.

Examples of fail whale in a Sentence

formal The company's website crashed, displaying the fail whale due to high traffic.

informal I tried to upload a video, but all I got was the fail whale.

slang Ugh, I keep getting the fail whale whenever I try to access that site.

figurative Whenever I try to cook dinner, it always ends up being a fail whale.

Grammatical Forms of fail whale

past tense

failed

plural

fail whales

comparative

more fail whale

superlative

most fail whale

present tense

fail whale

future tense

will fail whale

perfect tense

have failed whale

continuous tense

is failing whale

singular

fail whale

positive degree

fail whale

infinitive

to fail whale

gerund

failing whale

participle

failed whale

Origin and Evolution of fail whale

First Known Use: 2008 year
Language of Origin: English
Story behind the word: The term 'fail whale' originated from the social media platform Twitter, where a cartoon image of a whale being lifted by birds was displayed whenever the site experienced an outage or technical failure.
Evolution of the word: Originally used humorously to refer to Twitter's technical issues, 'fail whale' has since become a popular term in internet culture to describe any kind of failure or setback.