1. malfunction - Noun
2. malfunction - Verb
a failure to function normally
fail to function or function improperly
Source: WordNetModern historians have suggested that in his last years he (Richard II) was overtaken by mental disease, but that is only a modern view of the malfunction common to 14th century rulers: inability to inhibit impulse. Barbara Tuchman
Idiots emit bogons, causing machinery to malfunction in their presence. System administrators absorb bogons, letting machinery work again. Charles Stross
The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it. John Perry Barlow
A malfunction of this type can be cured only by changing the nature of the universe, which is, of course, impractical. Robert Sheckley
If you improve or tinker with something long enough, eventually it will break or malfunction. Arthur Bloch
Especially with four insanely angry, sword-carrying pirates bearing down on you, followed closely by an alien with a genetic malfunction that posed like Elvis Presley and looked slightly like a cross between a koala and a cuddly dog. Ridley Pearson