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by Kate Woodford

We all make mistakes. Often, they’re small and easily corrected, though sadly this is not always true. Today’s post takes a look at the different types of mistakes that we make, big and small, written and spoken.

Starting with the written word, a small mistake in a text that has been typed or printed is called a typo or misprint:

Check carefully for typos.

The leaflet was full of misprints.

A slip of the tongue, meanwhile, is a small mistake that you make when speaking:

He’d said ‘Maria’ instead of ‘Mary’ – it was just a slip of the tongue.

A different type of error is an embarrassing mistake that someone makes in a social situation. A mistake when speaking to or dealing with someone that makes us appear rather rude may be called a gaffe. The more formal French term faux pas (pronounced /fəʊ ˈpɑː/) is also used, especially when someone has caused embarrassment by accidentally breaking a social rule:

His failure to greet the president’s wife was just the latest in a series of embarrassing gaffes.

She’d already committed the faux pas of leaving the table before the meal was finished.

Some words are reserved for bad mistakes. For example, the informal noun howler is used in both speech and writing for a very obvious and stupid mistake. A blunder is also a stupid mistake, often caused by not taking enough care. ‘Blunder’ is also used as a verb:

There was an absolute howler in the report’s opening paragraph.

This was a major political blunder, and it cost him his reputation.

The police would eventually admit that they had blundered.

Conversely, a slip is a small, often careless, mistake. You make a slip. Another way of saying ‘make a slip’ is the phrasal verb slip up:

I feel she’s always waiting for me to make a slip.

These figures don’t make sense – we must have slipped up somewhere.

Another phrasal verb in this area is trip up. If you trip up, you make a mistake, and if you trip someone else up, you intentionally cause them to make a mistake:

Unfortunately, I tripped up on the last question.

He was always trying to trip me up in front of my colleagues.

Someone who makes a mistake while making a speech or reading out loud may be said to stumble:

She stumbled on the last line of the poem.

In US English, a mistake that shows poor judgment is sometimes called a misstep, and if someone says something incorrect by mistake, they may be said to misspeak:

The press seized on her slightest misstep.

He insisted that he hadn’t lied but had misspoken.

It’s worth noting that the prefix mis- is added to the beginning of some verbs (e.g. hear – mishear, spell – misspell) to show that a mistake is made while performing an action:

I must have misheard him.

She’d misspelled my name again.

I’d miscalculated how much this would cost.

Finally, a mix-up is a situation in which there is confusion caused by a mistake:

There’d been a mix-up over the date of the party and several people turned up on the wrong night.

Thanks for reading this post. I very much hope your week is free of gaffes, slips and mix-ups!