blunder

UK/ˈblʌn.dəː/US/ˈblʌn.dɚ/

verbC13 meanings Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,640 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: blunders, blundered, blundering

A blunder is a stupid mistake — not bad luck, but something you should have seen. Sending the angry email to the person it was about; the chess move that hands over your queen in one go.

The verb splits in two directions. You blunder, meaning you make that kind of mistake. And you blunder somewhere: to move about clumsily and half-blind, blundering into the furniture in the dark, blundering into a conversation you were not part of. Fixed uses gather round the noun — a diplomatic blunder, a costly blunder, a schoolboy blunder — and you can blunder on, keeping going badly rather than stopping. Note the size of it. A blunder is bigger and more embarrassing than a slip or a typo; you would not call a small spelling mistake a blunder unless it reached the front page.

Definitions of blunder

1verbbadTo make a bad, careless mistake.C1~2%
“The company blundered badly by announcing the price before the date.”
2verbblunderTo move about clumsily and blindly, bumping into things.C1~2%
“He blundered through the dark hall and knocked over a lamp.”
3nounerrorA bad, careless and embarrassing mistake.C1~96%
“Losing the file was a blunder nobody could explain away.”
synonyms: mistake, error

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Where it comes from

Blunder comes from Middle English blundren, a repeated-action form of blunden, to stagger or stumble, which traces to Old Norse blunda, to shut the eyes or doze. It is related to blind. To blunder was first to go about with your eyes shut — which is still what it feels like.

Middle English
blundren
English, today
blunder

Built from

blonder · Middle English — disturbance, strife

Middle English blundren, blondren and blunder, blonder (“disturbance, strife”), from the verb; partly from Middle English blondren, a frequentative form of Middle English blonden, blanden "to mix; mix up"; corresponding to blend + -er; and partly from Middle English blundren, a frequentative form of Middle English blunden (“to stagger; stumble”), from Old Norse blunda (“to shut the eyes; doze”). Cognates include Norwegian blunda (“to shut the eyes; doze”), dialectal Swedish blundra (“to act blindly or rashly”), Danish blunde (“to blink”) or blunde (“to take a nap”), Icelandic blunda (“to nap; doze”). Related to English blind.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Sharper Verbs, A Man Called Ove, Chess & Card Games

First appears in chapter 20 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

blunder in the wild

A blunder refers to a "stupid, careless mistake".
Blunder
In chess, a blunder is a critically bad mistake that severely worsens the player's position by allowing a loss of material, checkmate, or anything similar.
Blunder (chess)
Although blunders are most common in beginner games, all human players make them, even at the world championship level.
Blunder (chess)
A brand blunder is an error associated with the branding of a product, especially a new product in a new market.
Brand blunder
There are numerous examples of brand blunders in marketing history; there are also numerous urban legends surrounding brand blunders, where there is little evidence of an actual blunder.
Brand blunder

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

Definitions of blunder

1verbbadTo make a bad, careless mistake.C1~2%

“The company blundered badly by announcing the price before the date.”

2verbblunderTo move about clumsily and blindly, bumping into things.C1~2%

“He blundered through the dark hall and knocked over a lamp.”

3nounerrorA bad, careless and embarrassing mistake.C1~96%

“Losing the file was a blunder nobody could explain away.”

synonyms: mistake, error

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 7 sentences found in the wild and placed 7 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.