error
/ˈɛrə
/noun
1A mistake: spelling errors an error of judgement...
- A minute mistake, an error of judgement, is all that it takes for a ghastly mishap to occur, resulting in death or worse, a life-long disability.
- In a way, Nolan makes a similar error of judgement, mistaking atmospheric darkness for thematic darkness.
- That happens a lot on the web, and sometimes it can be used to cover awful mistakes or errors of judgment.
Synonyms
mistake, fallacy, misconception, delusion;
inaccuracy, miscalculation, misreckoning;
blunder, fault, flaw, oversight;
misprint, literal, erratum, misinterpretation, misreading
informal slip-up, bloomer, boo-boo, howler, boner, fail
British informal boob
1.1 [mass noun] The state or condition of being wrong in conduct or judgement: goods dispatched to your branch in error the crash was caused by human error...
- Now, as a consequent of inadvertent human error, conditions are contrary to preferred expectations.
- The common threads running through most nuclear accidents are unexpected technical conditions and human error.
- Lastly, don't discount the possibility of human error when conducting the audit.
Synonyms
wrongly, by mistake, mistakenly, incorrectly, inappropriately, misguidedly;
accidentally, by accident, inadvertently, unintentionally, unwittingly, unknowingly, unconsciously, by chance
1.2 [mass noun] technical A measure of the estimated difference between the observed or calculated value of a quantity and its true value.There is a statistically significant difference in the estimating error between estimating at WBS level one and level two....
- The within group variance component estimates measurement error, as percentage of the total variance.
- We compared the Ka and Ks values computed from the three methods with their corresponding expected values and calculated their error percentages.
Phrases
see the error of one's ways
Derivatives
errorless
- Robb's performance was matched by his team's errorless game in the field.
- He had 25 hits in his first 67 at-bats and was errorless in 15 starts (14 at second base, one at shortstop).
- Why do people prefer the reproduction of other people's errors to my own errorless prose?
Origin
Middle English: via Old French from Latin error, from errare 'to stray, err'.