de·fault / diˈfôlt/ • n. 1. failure to fulfill an obligation, esp. to repay a loan or appear in a court of law: restructuring debts to avoid default.2. a preselected option adopted by a computer program or other mechanism when no alternative is specified by the user or programmer.• v. [intr.] 1. fail to fulfill an obligation, esp. to repay a loan or to appear in a court of law: some defaulted on student loans. ∎  [tr.] declare (a party) in default and give judgment against that party.2. (default to) (of a computer program or other mechanism) revert automatically to (a preselected option): the system defaults to its own style.PHRASES: by default because of a lack of opposition: he won the election by default. ∎  through lack of positive action rather than conscious choice: the proposal died by default.in default failing to repay a loan or appear in a court of law: a company in default on its loans.in default of in the absence of.

DEFAULT

An omission; a failure to do that which is anticipated, expected, or required in a given situation.

Default is distinguishable from negligence in that it does not involve carelessness or imprudence with respect to the discharge of a duty or obligation but rather the intentional omission or nonperformance of a duty.

To default on a debt is to fail to pay it upon its due date. Default in contract law implies failure to perform a contractual obligation.

A default judgment is one that may be entered against a party in a lawsuit for failure to comply with a procedural step in the suit, such as failure to file an answer to a complaint or failure to file a paper on time. A default judgment is not one that goes to the merits of a lawsuit but is procedural in nature.

default A value that is used when no other value has been supplied. Defaults may be stored in a configuration file, or they may be embedded in a program or permanently encoded into ROM, or read from the settings of a DIP switch. Nearly every application has defaults for something. For instance, word processors have default fonts, justification, and page length, World Wide Web browsers have default home pages, compilers have default optimization levels, and drawing programs have default palettes and pen thickness.

default sb. XIII. ME. defaut(e) —

1. OF. defaute, f. defaillir, on the model of faute FAULT, faillir FAIL;

2. (O)F. défaut, back-formation on defaute.
Hence default vb. XIV.