From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishfailure to do somethingfailure to do somethingNOT DO somethingan act of not doing something which should be done or which people expect you to do Failure to produce proof of identity could result in prosecution. → failure
Examples from the Corpus
failure to do something• Ewing lamented his failure to learn Gaelic, and he never managed to train enough priests who did.• Sources of errors in searching mainly involve failure to find related papers due to inconsistencies in the use of personal names.• It helps to explain the conservatism of our class struggle, and its failure to mature into socialist struggle.• Diagnostic difficulties in those cases were related to confusing radiological and endoscopic appearances or failure to obtain histological confirmation of lymphoma.• In that situation failure to accumulate in the face of rapidly rising real wage costs spells disaster.• Outdated computer systems and the failure to help judges to implement the reforms were adding to the chaos.• The failure to find a referent results in a numerical penalty being awarded to the reading for which it occurs.• Mind you, failure to display a phone number doesn't make them instantly dodgy. 