Blame and responsibility

The seventeenth entry is em falta, glossed here as « at fault » because that is what its sentence needs: Quem não avisou está em falta, whoever failed to give notice is in the wrong. The difficulty is that Portuguese puts two further states into the same two words and English keeps all three apart. A thing can be em falta: a medicine em falta is out of stock, missing from the shelf, in short supply, and no blame attaches to anybody at all. A person can be em falta com alguém, and that is owing somebody something — an answer, a visit, a promise kept. « At fault » would be far too heavy there, because the English for it is to have let somebody down. Only the third use, the one this page needs, is about conduct. What saves the reader is to look at what comes next. Nothing at all after it, and the blame is meant; com and a person, and it is a debt of courtesy; a thing as the subject, and the shelf is simply empty.