slip of the pen

English

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

slip of the pen (plural slips of the pen)

1. (idiomatic) A mistake in handwriting; (loosely) any minor error by the writer that made it into print, having not been caught by editors or proofreaders.

   Synonyms: lapsus calami, lapsus plumæ

   Coordinate terms: slip of the tongue, lapsus linguae

   Near-synonyms: writo; misprint; miswriting; typo

   • 1961 December, “New reading on railways: The South Eastern & Chatham Railway. By O. S. Nock”, in Trains Illustrated, page 768:

     There are one or two slips of the pen—L.S.W.R. trains did not run through Ludgate Hill, for instance—[...].

Related terms

• Freudian slip

Translations

mistake in handwriting

• Bulgarian: правописна грешка (pravopisna greška)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 筆誤 / 笔误 (zh) (bǐwù)

• Finnish: kirjoitusvirhe (fi)
• German: Schreibfehler (de) m
• Icelandic: pennaglöp n pl, ritvilla f, slæm ritvilla f
• Latin: lapsus calami m
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: skrivefeil (no) m

  Nynorsk: skrivefeil m

• Russian: опи́ска (ru) f (opíska)
• Vietnamese: viết nhịu (vi)

References

• “slip of the pen”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.