error

1. 1.

   a wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention

   “he made a bad mistake”

   “she was quick to point out my errors”

   “I could understand his English in spite of his grammatical faults”

   Synonymsmistakefault

   Broadernonaccomplishment

   Narrowerblotconfusionincursionmiscalculationdistortionslipoffsideoversightomissionblunder
2. 2.

   inadvertent incorrectness

   Synonymserroneousness

   Broaderincorrectness

   Narrowerdeviation
3. 3.

   a misconception resulting from incorrect information

   Synonymserroneous belief

   Broadermisconception
4. 4.

   (baseball) a failure of a defensive player to make an out when normal play would have sufficed

   Synonymsmisplay

   Broaderfailure

   baseball

5. 5.

   departure from what is ethically acceptable

   Synonymswrongdoing

   Broaderevil
6. 6.

   (computer science) the occurrence of an incorrect result produced by a computer

   Synonymscomputer error

   Broaderhappening

   Narrowerhardware errorsoftware erroralgorithm error

   computer science

7. 7.

   part of a statement that is not correct

   “the book was full of errors”

   Synonymsmistake

   Broadermisstatement

   Narrowercorrigendummisprint

Other forms of error

plural

errors·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about error

What does error mean?

error means "a wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention". That is the primary sense; the word has 7 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in error?

error has 2 syllables: er-ror. The stress falls on "er". In IPA it is /ˈɛɹɚ/.

What is another word for error?

Close synonyms include mistake, fault, erroneousness, erroneous belief, misplay. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is error a common word?

error is banded "Common" — everyday vocabulary in speech and writing. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.