error

error, mistake, blunder, slip, lapse, faux pas, bull, howler, boner are comparable when they denote something (as an act, statement, or belief) that involves a departure from what is, or what is generally held to be, true, right, or proper.

Error implies a straying from a proper course and suggests such guilt as may lie in failure to take proper advantage of a guide (as a record or manuscript, a rule or set of rules, or a principle, law, or code); thus, a typographical error results when a compositor misreads a manuscript; an error in addition involves some failure to follow the rules for addition; an error in conduct is an infraction of an accepted code of manners or morals

{

those who, with sincerity and generosity, fight and fall in an evil cause, posterity can only compassionate as victims of a generous but fatal error— Scott

}

{

without understanding grievous and irreparable errors can be made— Donald Harrington

}

Mistake implies misconception, misunderstanding, a wrong but not always blameworthy judgment, or inadvertence; it expresses less severe criticism than error

{

he made a serious mistake when he chose the law as his profession

}

{

a child makes many mistakes in spelling

}

{

there is a medium between truth and falsehood, and (I believe) the word mistake expresses it exactly. I will therefore say that you were mistaken— Cowper

}

Blunder is harsher than mistake or error; it commonly implies ignorance or stupidity, sometimes blameworthiness

{

we usually call our blunders mistakes, and our friends style our mistakes blunders— Wheatley

}

{

one's translation is sure to be full of gross blunders, but the supreme blunder is that of translating at all when one is trying to catch not a fact but a feeling— Henry Adams

}

Slip carries a stronger implication of inadvertence or accident than mistake and often, in addition, connotes triviality

{

the wrong date on the check was a slip of the pen

}

{

a social slip which makes us feel hot all over— L. P. Smith

}

Often, especially when it implies a transgression against morality, the word is used euphemistically or ironically

{

let Christian's slips before he came hither ... be a warning to those that come after— Bunyan

}

{

the minister . . . comes when people are in extremis, but they don't send for him every time they make a slight moral slip—tell a lie, for instance, or smuggle a silk dress through the customhouse— Holmes

}

Lapse, though sometimes used interchangeably with slip, stresses forgetfulness, weakness, or inattention more than accident; thus, one says a lapse of memory or a slip of the pen, but not vice versa

{

writes well, despite occasional lapses into polysyllabic humor— Geographical Jour.

}

When used in reference to a moral transgression, it carries a weaker implication of triviality than slip and a stronger one of a fall from grace or from one's own standards

{

for all his . . . lapses, there was in him a real nobility, an even ascetic firmness and purity of character— Ellis

}

Faux pas is most frequently applied to a mistake in etiquette

{

she was carefully instructed so that there was no danger of her making a faux pas when she was presented at the Court of St. James's

}

{

John and 1, horrified, hustled him .out before he could commit any further faux pas—S. H. Adams

}

Bull, howler, and boner all three are rather informal terms applicable to blunders (and especially to blunders in speech or writing) that typically have an amusing aspect. A bull may be a grotesque blunder in language typically characterized by some risible incongruity

{

the well-known bull stating that "one man is just as good as another—and sometimes more so"

}

or it may be a mere stupid or gauche blunder

{

he really committed a bull when he solemnly introduced his new friend to the latter's ex-wife

}

A howler is a gross or ludicrous error based on ignorance or confusion of ideas; the term is used especially of laughable errors in scholastic recitations or examinations

{

a collection of schoolboy howlers

}

{

a howler that turns the title "Intimations of Immortality" into "Imitations of Immorality"

}

A boner may be a grammatical, logical, or factual blunder in a piece of writing that is usually so extreme as to be funny

{

a few historical boners . . . such as dinosaurs surviving until medieval times— Coulton Waugh

}

or it may be a ridiculous or embarrassing slip of the kind that results from a sudden lapse (as of attention or from tact or decorum)

{

is the proprietor of a large and varied selection of diplomatic boners— Rosenthal

}