Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To make an error or a mistake.
- v. To violate accepted moral standards; sin.
- v. Archaic To stray.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To wander; go in a devious and uncertain course.
- To deviate from the true course or purpose; hence, to wander from truth or from the path of duty; depart from rectitude; go astray morally.
- To go astray in thought or belief; be mistaken; blunder; misapprehend.
- To mislead; cause to deviate from truth or rectitude.
- To miss; mistake.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. Archaic To wander; to roam; to stray.
- v. To deviate from the true course; to miss the thing aimed at.
- v. To miss intellectual truth; to fall into error; to mistake in judgment or opinion; to be mistaken.
- v. To deviate morally from the right way; to go astray, in a figurative sense; to do wrong; to sin.
- v. To offend, as by erring.
WordNet 3.0
- v. to make a mistake or be incorrect
- v. wander from a direct course or at random
Etymologies
- From Middle English erren, from Old French errer ("to wander, err, mistake"), from Latin errō ("wander, stray, err, mistake", v), from Proto-Indo-European *ares- (“to be angry, lose one's temper”). Cognate with Old English eorre, ierre ("anger, wrath, ire"), Old English iersian ("to be angry with, rage, irritate, provoke"), Old English ierre ("wandering, gone astray, confused"). (Wiktionary)
- Middle English erren, from Old French errer, from Latin errāre, to wander; see ers- in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Having argued that the right of slavery, if it exist, implies the right to shoot and murder an enlightened neighbor, with a view to reduce his wife and children to a state of servitude, as well as to crush their intellectual and moral nature in order to keep them in such a state, the author adds, "If I err in making these inferences, I _err innocently_.”
“; if (count ($err)) $_SESSION [ 'msg'] [ 'reg-err']”
“To err is human, to be intentionally wrong all the time requires a liberal!”
“In lieu of a Guassian distribution of the results, 12% of pollsters felt that 34% of statisticians are in err if applying any type of Geiger's method toward normalization of the results.”
CNN Poll: Americans divided on President's health care plans
“To err is human, but to pass judgement on other people is to leave one to judged.”
“This health care bill is subject to much corruption as if we didn't learn from the recent mistakes of stimulus plan that the Democrats push and are in err of reporting the job they save.”
“To err is human, this is my last spasm of carping about this-I need the pins out of the dolls to hold my pants together.”
“To err is human, as the old cliché goes, and I think those points at which we all err in the book are the very things that will draw people in.”
A Conversation with Ta-Nehisi Coates author of The Beautiful Struggle
“Even the best intentioned will sometimes blunder; but as Alexander Pope impeccably said: "To err is human; to forgive, divine.”
“I know you people will too, in err, ignorant of or disregarding the god's laws, but the difference was THE GODS WILL ASK THEM!!!”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘err’.
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UK Usage - Find US Equivalent
All these terms have a (different) American English equivalent. Wonder if you can identify them?
abridgement (abri..., accoutrement, accoutre, acknowledgement (..., opposite, advert, adaptor, adapter, sticking plaster, advertise, adviser (advisor ..., adze, aesthete and 1196 more...
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The Request Line
This is the place to add words you'd like Charles Harrington Elster to pronounce for you!
swingeing, affiant, dahlia, hydrangea, re, clematis, Nabokov, casu marzu, schadenfreudgeon, nefarious, mewl, manteion and 170 more...
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3-letter Scrabble Words
aah, aal, aas, aba, abo, abs, aby, ace, act, add, ado, ads and 995 more...
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3 Letter Words
A list of English words that are three letters long.
ace, act, ade, ado, add, ads, age, ago, ail, air, aim, all and 397 more...
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Words with unusual spellings or pronu...
Herein are listed words with oddball spellings and words whose pronunciation does not reflect the spelling.
eleemosynary, Wednesday, colonel, posslq, zaqqum, qwerty, cinquefoil, qibla(h), minuscule, Cholmondeley, polyphloisboian, ptisan and 67 more...
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DAY4_01/07/2013
ponderous, censor, censure, imponderable, expurgate, artifice, artful, artless, err, errand, expunge, arrant and 16 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1856 more...
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magoosh1
aberration, aboveboard, abysmal, ace, affable, aghast, alacrity, ambiguous, ambivalent, ameliorate, amenable, amiable and 222 more...
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Serendipity's Words
defenestration, mercurial, syzygy, wicked, iniquitous, metastable, demimonde, entropic, ephemeral, irreligious, frisbee, manifold and 474 more...
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cross words
the good ole boys of the nyt crossword puzzle
oleo, oreo, stlo, amie, ares, eros, erato, sloe, ogee, apse, enola, ecru and 94 more...
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I do not like them, Sam I Am
Words that, for various reasons, I wish we could do without.
copacetic, gamut, horehound, lewd, membrane, metrics, mucous, mucus, negligee, nostril, odious, odor and 143 more...
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gcherches's Words
serendipity, roadrunner, inner child, coagulant, esquire, vicissitude, idiot savant, mitigation, affirmation, affirmative, diatribe, affirmative action and 185 more...
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practice 2
100 words
momentous, domicile, adroit, ingenious, dexterous, genius, brevity, decorum, propriety, dignity, err, blunder and 91 more...
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gerwitz's Words
erudite, autodidactic, callipygian, ouroboros, zounds, fie, wabi, sabi, gedankenexperiment, zeitgeist, eliminativism, aether and 157 more...
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newGRE
mostly from magoosh
imbue, verge on, nonchalant, deliberate, timorous, futile, provisional, dissect, checked, tinged, alluring, visionary and 1046 more...
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je les adore!
fusillade, foal, celestial, abattoir, byzantium, berlin, casablanca, babylon, balkans, albion, avalon, between the devil... and 471 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for err.
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