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error

noun

Simple meaning

A mistake; an accidental wrong action or a false statement not made deliberately.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

ehrer

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈɛɹɚ

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. countable

    A mistake; an accidental wrong action or a false statement not made deliberately.

  2. uncountable

    The state, quality, or condition of being wrong.

  3. countableuncountable

    Sin; transgression.

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
A1 · Beginner
Frequency
Very Common
Typical Use
Everyday English

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The state, quality, or condition of being wrong.

Used this way, error is a reasonably familiar word with a faintly unfavourable edge. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Slightly negative
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Moderate
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Critical or judgemental
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

More ways to use error

  • “The book was full of errors.”noun

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

standard errorerror messagemeasurement errorsampling errorhuman errorprobable errorerror rateerror term

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Word Family

Related forms, grouped by how they connect.

Compound terms

Established multiword terms.

  • error correction codenounCompound term

    A coding system that incorporates extra parity bits in order to detect errors.

  • disk errornounCompound term

    Error resulting from malfunction of a magnetic disk.

  • hardware errornounCompound term

    Error resulting from a malfunction of some physical component of the computer.

  • inborn error of metabolismnounCompound term

    Any of a number of diseases in which an inherited defect (usually a missing or inadequate enzyme) results in an abnormality of metabolism.

  • literal errornounCompound term

    A mistake in printed matter resulting from mechanical failures of some kind.

  • margin of errornounCompound term

    The margin required in order to insure safety.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: mistake

fault

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.