dead-end vs failure

dead-end

noun
  • A position that offers no hope of progress. 

  • A road with no exit. 

verb
  • To come to a dead-end. 

adj
  • Going nowhere; blocked. 

failure

noun
  • State or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, opposite of success. 

  • Omission to do something, whether or not it was attempted, especially something that ought to have been done. 

  • Bankruptcy. 

  • An object, person or endeavour in a state of failure or incapable of success. 

  • Termination of the ability of an item to perform its required function; breakdown. 

How often have the words dead-end and failure occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )