COLLAPSE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Collapse

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/kəlˈæps/ Listen

noun

Collapse n.

A falling together suddenly, as of the sides of a hollow vessel.

A sudden and complete failure; an utter failure of any kind; a breakdown. (Colloq.)

(Med.) Extreme depression or sudden failing of all the vital powers, as the result of disease, injury, or nervous disturbance.

verb

Collapse v. i. (past & past part. collapsed; pres. part. collapsing)

To fall together suddenly, as the sides of a hollow vessel; to close by falling or shrinking together; to have the sides or parts of (a thing) fall in together, or be crushed in together; as, a flue in the boiler of a steam engine sometimes collapses. "A balloon collapses when the gas escapes from it."

To fail suddenly and completely, like something hollow when subject to too much pressure; to undergo a collapse; as, Maximilian's government collapsed soon after the French army left Mexico; many financial projects collapse after attaining some success and importance.

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Etymology of 'Collapse'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Collapse" Quotes from Famous Books

... almost in a state of collapse—for the bitter satisfaction of imparting the news no longer supported him—stared. "A month's work?" he muttered. "A month? Years you told me! ...

— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... other drop behind him. Neither had slept a wink the previous night. Instead, they had kept themselves awake with hot tea. Fagged out after a day of hard hunting, each was convinced his life depended on wakefulness. West's iron strength had stood the strain without any outward signs of collapse, but Whaley was stumbling with fatigue as he dragged himself ...

— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... captors meant to conduct her into the town of Akwar, nearby, and with her knowledge of the fanatical hatred of the population against all Christians she still hoped to find some friends there who would protect her from harm. And thus it was that she was not in the state of collapse or ...

— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis

... their overwhelming defeat, and when there was still some apprehension of bloody vengeance to be visited upon the leaders of the rebellion—as was the case, for instance, in Hungary in 1849 after the collapse of the great insurrection—those measures would have been accepted as an escape from something worse. Even negro suffrage in a qualified form, as General Lee's testimony before the Reconstruction Committee showed, might then have been accepted ...

— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various

... hope of her recovery. Not being able to be with her during the day, he watched at her bedside during the greater part of the night, and if it had not been for Teresa, who compelled him to go and take some rest, he would have, undoubtedly, suffered a collapse himself. How long those days appeared to be in spite of the happy companionship that I had found with my dear cousin Paula! My father hardly noticed us, absorbed as he was with the fear that filled his heart, and Teresa ...

— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte

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