BLUNDER • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Blunder

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/blˈəndər/ Listen

noun

Blunder n.

1.

Confusion; disturbance. (Obs.)

2.

A gross error or mistake, resulting from carelessness, stupidity, or culpable ignorance.

Synonyms: Blunder, Error, Mistake, Bull. An error is a departure or deviation from that which is right or correct; as, an error of the press; an error of judgment. A mistake is the interchange or taking of one thing for another, through haste, inadvertence, etc.; as, a careless mistake. A blunder is a mistake or error of a gross kind. It supposes a person to flounder on in his course, from carelessness, ignorance, or stupidity. A bull is a verbal blunder containing a laughable incongruity of ideas.

verb

Blunder v. t.

1.

To cause to blunder. (Obs.) "To blunder an adversary."

2.

To do or treat in a blundering manner; to confuse. "He blunders and confounds all these together."

Blunder v. i. (past & past part. blundered; pres. part. blundering)

1.

To make a gross error or mistake; as, to blunder in writing or preparing a medical prescription.

2.

To move in an awkward, clumsy manner; to flounder and stumble. "I was never distinguished for address, and have often even blundered in making my bow." "Yet knows not how to find the uncertain place, And blunders on, and staggers every pace."

To blunder on.

(a)

To continue blundering.

(b)

To find or reach as if by an accident involving more or less stupidity, applied to something desirable; as, to blunder on a useful discovery.

See images of 'Blunder'

Etymology of 'Blunder'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Blunder" Quotes from Famous Books

... had her trials of the same character. Nothing ever annoyed her so much as a little blunder she made, the week after the opening of the session. I have not yet mentioned that there was already a universal dissatisfaction among the women, on account of their being liable to military service. The war seemed to have hardly begun, as yet, and conscription was already talked ...

— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor

... praiseworthy frankness. He would even have extended his sympathy, except that his first efforts in this direction had not been received in the spirit he thought they should have been. If Buckner's statement was correct, there had been a cruel blunder on the part of Eleanor's counsel; yet unless he was certain of his ground, Gorham could not comprehend his daring to place himself in so dangerous a position. Already the machinery was in motion to settle this point, but so ...

— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... ignorantly and needlessly sacrificed to ministerial disregard of physical laws and its consequences,—lessons which, unfortunately, seem to have but little effect on cabinets, owing to their shifting personelle, England following up the disasters of Carthagena with the still greater blunder of the Walcheren expedition, where, out of England's small available physical war material, nearly forty thousand men were either left to fatten the swamps of Walcheren, or to wander through England in after years on the ...

— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... anxious to repair his blunder by siding with Francis against Charles, or to snatch some profit from the Emperor's victory by completing the ruin of France, the refusal of Englishmen to find more money for the war left him no option but ...

— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... unnecessary disaster, and grieving over the useless loss and suffering of his gallant men, it was but natural that he should vent his feelings in sharp and caustic denunciation of all who were in any degree responsible for the blunder. He was especially outspoken with Grant and Rawlins, whose confidence he had won in the Chattanooga campaign, and with whom he had since been on terms of the closest intimacy and friendship. It is but just to note that they ...

— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson

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