Adjacent Words

Error definitions

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Webster's 1828 Dictionary

ER'ROR, n. [L. error, from erro, to wander.] A wandering or deviation from the truth; a mistake in judgment, by which men assent to or believe what is not true. Error may be voluntary, or involuntary. Voluntary, when men neglect or pervert the proper means to inform the mind; involuntary, when the means of judging correctly are not in their power. An error committed through carelessness or haste is a blunder.
Charge home upon error its most tremendous consequences.
1. A mistake made in writing or other performance. It is no easy task to correct the errors of the press. Authors sometimes charge their own errors to the printer.
2. A wandering; excursion; irregular course.
Driv'n by the winds and errors of the sea.
[This sense is unusual and hardly legitimate.]
3. Deviation from law, justice or right; oversight; mistake in conduct.
Say not, it was an error. Ecclesiastes 5.
4. In scripture and theology, sin; iniquity; transgression.
Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Psalms 19.
5. In law, a mistake in pleading or in judgment. A writ of error, is a writ founded on an alleged error in judgment, which carries the suit to another tribunal for redress. Hence the following verb,
ER'ROR, v.t. To determine a judgment of court to be erroneous.
[The use of this verb is not well authorized.]

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
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" [syn: mistake, error, fault]
2: inadvertent incorrectness [syn: erroneousness, error]
3: a misconception resulting from incorrect information [syn: error, erroneous belief]
4: (baseball) a failure of a defensive player to make an out when normal play would have sufficed [syn: error, misplay]
5: departure from what is ethically acceptable [syn: error, wrongdoing]
6: (computer science) the occurrence of an incorrect result produced by a computer [syn: error, computer error]
7: part of a statement that is not correct; "the book was full of errors" [syn: error, mistake]

Merriam Webster's

noun Etymology: Middle English errour, from Anglo-French, from Latin error, from errare Date: 13th century 1. a. an act or condition of ignorant or imprudent deviation from a code of behavior b. an act involving an unintentional deviation from truth or accuracy <made an error in adding up the bill> c. an act that through ignorance, deficiency, or accident departs from or fails to achieve what should be done <an error in judgment>: as (1) a defensive misplay other than a wild pitch or passed ball made by a baseball player when normal play would have resulted in an out or prevented an advance by a base runner (2) the failure of a player (as in tennis) to make a successful return of a ball during play d. a mistake in the proceedings of a court of record in matters of law or of fact 2. a. the quality or state of erring <the map is in error> b. Christian Science illusion about the nature of reality that is the cause of human suffering ; the contradiction of truth c. an instance of false belief 3. something produced by mistake <a typographical error>; especially a postage stamp exhibiting a consistent flaw (as a wrong color) in its manufacture 4. a. the difference between an observed or calculated value and a true value; specifically variation in measurements, calculations, or observations of a quantity due to mistakes or to uncontrollable factors b. the amount of deviation from a standard or specification 5. a deficiency or imperfection in structure or function <an error of metabolism> • errorless adjective Synonyms: error, mistake, blunder, slip, lapse mean a departure from what is true, right, or proper. error suggests the existence of a standard or guide and a straying from the right course through failure to make effective use of this <procedural errors>. mistake implies misconception or inadvertence and usually expresses less criticism than error <dialed the wrong number by mistake>. blunder regularly imputes stupidity or ignorance as a cause and connotes some degree of blame <diplomatic blunders>. slip stresses inadvertence or accident and applies especially to trivial but embarrassing mistakes <a slip of the tongue>. lapse stresses forgetfulness, weakness, or inattention as a cause <a lapse in judgment>.

Britannica Concise

In applied mathematics, the difference between a value and an estimate of that value. In statistics, a common example is the difference between the mean age of a given group of people (see mean, median, and mode) and that of a sample drawn from the group. In numerical analysis, an example of round-off error is the difference between the true value of pi and commonly substituted expressions like 22/7 and shorter versions like 3.14159. Truncation error results from using only the first few terms of an infinite series. Relative error is the ratio of the size of an error to the size of the quantity measured, and percentage error is relative error expressed as a percent.

Oxford Reference Dictionary

n. 1 a mistake. 2 the condition of being wrong in conduct or judgement (led into error). 3 a wrong opinion or judgement. 4 the amount by which something is incorrect or inaccurate in a calculation or measurement. Derivatives: errorless adj. Etymology: ME f. OF errour f. L error -oris (as ERR)

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Error Er"ror, n. [OF. error, errur, F. erreur, L. error, fr. errare to err. See Err.] 1. A wandering; a roving or irregular course. [Obs.] The rest of his journey, his error by sea. --B. Jonson. 2. A wandering or deviation from the right course or standard; irregularity; mistake; inaccuracy; something made wrong or left wrong; as, an error in writing or in printing; a clerical error. 3. A departing or deviation from the truth; falsity; false notion; wrong opinion; mistake; misapprehension. H? judgment was often in error, though his candor remained unimpaired. --Bancroft. 4. A moral offense; violation of duty; a sin or transgression; iniquity; fault. --Ps. xix. 12. 5. (Math.) The difference between the approximate result and the true result; -- used particularly in the rule of double position. 6. (Mensuration) (a) The difference between an observed value and the true value of a quantity. (b) The difference between the observed value of a quantity and that which is taken or computed to be the true value; -- sometimes called residual error. 7. (Law.) A mistake in the proceedings of a court of record in matters of law or of fact. 8. (Baseball) A fault of a player of the side in the field which results in failure to put out a player on the other side, or gives him an unearned base. Law of error, or Law of frequency of error (Mensuration), the law which expresses the relation between the magnitude of an error and the frequency with which that error will be committed in making a large number of careful measurements of a quantity. Probable error. (Mensuration) See under Probable. Writ of error (Law), an original writ, which lies after judgment in an action at law, in a court of record, to correct some alleged error in the proceedings, or in the judgment of the court. --Bouvier. Burrill. Syn: Mistake; fault; blunder; failure; fallacy; delusion; hallucination; sin. See Blunder.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(errors) Frequency: The word is one of the 3000 most common words in English. 1. An error is something you have done which is considered to be incorrect or wrong, or which should not have been done. NASA discovered a mathematical error in its calculations... MPs attacked lax management and errors of judgment. N-VAR: oft N prep 2. If you do something in error or if it happens in error, you do it or it happens because you have made a mistake, especially in your judgment. The plane was shot down in error by a NATO missile. PHRASE: usu PHR after v 3. If someone sees the error of their ways, they realize or admit that they have made a mistake or behaved badly. I wanted an opportunity to talk some sense into him and try to make him see the error of his ways. PHRASE: PHR after v

Soule's Dictionary of English Synonyms

n. 1. Mistake, blunder, misapprehension, oversight, inaccuracy. 2. Sin, fault, offence, trespass, transgression, delinquency, iniquity, misdoing, misdeed, shortcoming, wrong-doing.

Moby Thesaurus

ALGOL, Albigensianism, Arianism, COBOL, Catharism, Ebionitism, Erastianism, FORTRAN, Gnosticism, Jovinianism, Lollardy, Manichaeanism, Manichaeism, Monophysism, Monophysitism, Pelagianism, Waldensianism, Wyclifism, abomination, abuse of terms, alphabetic data, alphanumeric code, angular data, antinomianism, assembler, at fault, atrocity, bad, bad job, bevue, binary digit, binary scale, binary system, bit, bloomer, blooper, blunder, bobble, boggle, bonehead play, boner, boo-boo, boob, botch, breach, bug, bull, bungle, byte, catachresis, clanger, clerical error, clumsy performance, command pulses, commands, compiler, computer code, computer language, computer program, contorting, control signals, controlled quantity, correcting signals, corrigendum, crime, crime against humanity, data, deadly sin, delinquency, delusion, dereliction, disgrace, distortion, eisegesis, emanatism, enormity, erratum, erroneously, erroneousness, error in judgment, error signals, etourderie, evil, failure, fallaciousness, fallacy, false doctrine, falsehood, falseness, falsity, fault, faute, faux pas, feedback pulses, feedback signals, felony, film data, flagitiousness, flaw, flub, fluff, foozle, foul-up, fumble, gaffe, garbling, gaucherie, genocide, gloss, goof, guilty act, hash, heavy sin, heresy, hexadecimal system, howler, human error, hylotheism, illusion, impropriety, in error, inaccuracy, incorrect, incorrectly, indecorum, indiscretion, inexpiable sin, infamy, information, iniquity, injudiciousness, injury, injustice, input data, input quantity, instructions, knavery, lapse, literal, machine language, malefaction, malentendu, malfeasance, malobservation, malum, mess, message, minor wrong, misapplication, misappreciation, misapprehension, misbelief, miscalculation, miscarriage, miscitation, miscomputation, misconception, misconduct, misconjecture, misconstruction, miscount, miscue, misdeal, misdeed, misdemeanor, misdoing, misestimation, misevaluation, misexplanation, misexplication, misexposition, misfeasance, misidentification, misintelligence, misinterpretation, misjudgment, misplay, misprint, misquotation, misreading, misrendering, misreport, miss, misstatement, misstep, mistake, mistaken, mistakenly, mistranslation, misunderstanding, misuse, misuse of words, misvaluation, mortal sin, muff, multiple messages, near-miss, noise, nonfeasance, numeric data, obliquity, octal system, off day, offense, omission, oscillograph data, output data, output quantity, outrage, oversight, pantheism, peccadillo, peccancy, perversion, play, polar data, poor judgment, punch-card data, random data, rectangular data, reference quantity, reprobacy, rock, ruly English, sad work, scandal, screamer, shame, signals, sin, sin of commission, sin of omission, sinful act, single messages, skewed judgment, slip, slipup, solecism, squeezing, stumble, tort, torturing, transgression, trespass, trip, twisting, typo, typographical error, unorganized data, untruth, unutterable sin, venial sin, villainy, visible-speech data, wickedness, wrenching, wrong, wrong construction, wrong impression, wrongdoing