I have the following sentence:
Can strong winds ______ a tall building?
Otherwise, I would have to ask "Can strong winds make a tall building fall?"
What is the suitable verb?
I have the following sentence:
Can strong winds ______ a tall building?
Otherwise, I would have to ask "Can strong winds make a tall building fall?"
What is the suitable verb?
An idiomatic way of asking this in English is
"Can strong winds blow a tall building over?"
Blow over: verb, intrasitive/transitive, if something is blown over, the wind made it fall- Macmillan
Going on from comments, the word topple seems clear. Lexico has
topple
VERBOverbalance or cause to overbalance and fall.
This can be applied equally to structures or people, and can be used both physically and metaphorically.
Can strong winds topple a tall building?
Can a newspaper topple an empire?
The most common ones would be the phrasal verbs "knock over" and "blow down".
In formal writing, you might prefer "topple".
There is a verb fell, which is defined as 'to knock, strike, shoot, or cut down; cause to fall', but it is almost always used for trees (usually by cutting) or large animals (usually by shooting).
Surprisingly, Google shows a very small number of usages related to buildings, for example:
The cost to fell a building or other structure by use of explosives may be less expensive than demolition by conventional means.
One of the first documented attempts to actually fell a building with explosives occurred in 1605 ...
... you cannot fell a building like a tree
It is a regular verb - the past tense is felled.
An 11-month-old boy was rescued from rubble, 35 hours after a deadly explosion felled a building in the Russian city of Magnitogorsk. (From no less a source than the Washington Post.)
But this is very rare and very unusual), and I am not suggesting that you use it. In fact, I am suggesting that you don't use it.
If you want to say the building is completely destroyed, you could use: - Can strong winds raze a tall building?
Raze - completely destroy (a building, town, or other settlement).
- villages were razed to the ground (Lexico)
The problem with this word though:
Can strong winds blast a tall building?
IMHO this would fit for a strong gust of wind, and indeed a very strong gust of wind would be necessary to make a building fall anyway.
"Blast" conveys the idea of explosion, IMHO including the idea of being moved aside and falling. IMHO this idea of falling is subtly different from topple, which does not include the idea of destruction.
From https://www.wordreference.com/definition/blast#advanced_18
Blast
to shatter by or as if by an explosion; ruin or destroy: [~ + object]blasted the enemy communications center.