lapsus oculi

English

WOTD – 25 September 2024

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from Latin lāpsus oculī (literally “slip of the eye”), from lāpsus (“slipping; (figurative, rare) error”) + oculī (genitive of oculus (“eye”)).

Pronunciation

(Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˌlæpsəs ˈɒkjʊlaɪ/
Audio (Southern England): (file)
(General American) IPA^(key): /ˌlæpsəs ˈɑkjəˌlaɪ/
Hyphenation: lap‧sus oc‧u‧li

Noun

lapsus oculi (plural lapsus oculi)

(formal, rare) An error that results from looking in the wrong place, especially one that occurs while copying or translating a body of text.
Hyponym: misreading
- 1828, “Dialogue II. The Convex Lens.”, in Optics, on the Principle of Images, without Material Light, Rays and Refraction. […], London: […] [Leech and Cheetham] for Longman, Rees and Co.; Manchester: Everett, →OCLC, page 38:
  Oh, a mere lapsus oculi. The Doctor's optics were not quite so sound, as he imagined.
- 1896, Theodore Gill, “Note on the Nomenclature of the Pœciloid Fishes”, in Marcus Benjamin, editor, Proceedings of the United States National Museum, volume XVIII, number 1060, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office [for the Smithsonian Institution], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 226:
  [T]he name Tetragonopterus was due to a lapsus oculi of [Georges] Cuvier and never appeared in that form till 1815; […]
- 1939, William Heath Robinson, K[enneth] R[obert] G[ordon] Browne, “Road Sense and Etiquette”, in How to Be a Motorist (Vintage Words of Wisdom; 14), [S.l.]: RHE Media, published 2014, →ISBN:
  Well, if what he runs into is the comely member, all may turn out for the best, as more than one romance has burgeoned in a Cottage Hospital. If, on the other hand, it is the local reservoir or a passing pantechnicon, he will probably regret his lapsus oculi (I think).
- 1961, Joseph Perry Ponte, “Introduction”, in Musica Disciplina: A Revised Text, Translation and Commentary, volume 1 (unpublished dissertation), Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University, →OCLC, page xiv:
  It has been carelessly copied and contains many lapsus oculi: frequently a single word has been omitted, obviously through inattention; occasionally a line or two of the archetype has been skipped, so that completely separate sentences have been fused together; sometimes simple mis-readings occur.
- 1970, Klearchos: Bollettino dell’Associazione Amici del Museo Nazionale di Reggio Calabria [Bulletin of the Association of Friends of the National Museum of Reggio Calabria], Naples: L’Arte Tiprografica Napoli, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 100:
  The straightforward and economical explanation of this mistake is a lapsus oculi on the part of the mason triggered by the structural similarity in his draft of the local freak beta and the mu which immediately followed it.
  Likely italicized.
- 1998, Norma Bouchard, Veronica Pravadelli, editors, Umberto Eco’s Alternative: The Politics of Culture and the Ambiguities of Interpretation, New York, N.Y.: Peter Lang, →ISBN, page 100:
  Was it a simple lapsus oculi on the part of the translator, a kind of scribal error that led to an involuntary deletion?
- 2002, Paul G[ardner] Remley, “Daniel, the Three Youths Fragment and the Transmission of Old English Verse”, in Michael Lapidge, Malcolm Godden, Simon Keynes, editors, Anglo-Saxon England, volume 31, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, →ISSN, pages 125 and 127:
  These lapses have adversely affected passages of the Daniel–Three Youths texts that once shared more than a dozen lines of verses, lines which now appear to have been lost due to a textual lacuna in one witness or the other. In each case, the lapse at issue arguably involves a textual loss occurring as a result of scribal inattention, specifically the sort of lapsus oculi that will be termed 'eye-skip' in subsequent discussion.

Coordinate terms

Translations

error that results from looking in the wrong place

Finnish: lapsus oculi
French: lapsus oculi m
Galician: please add this translation if you can
Latin: lāpsus oculī m