{
  "id": "error.mistake",
  "term": "error",
  "sense": "mistake",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 2,
  "arena": "error",
  "domain": "everyday",
  "style": null,
  "definition": "a difference that is not regular",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "difference.relation",
      "regular.frequency"
    ],
    "interaction": "if a difference is not regular, it happens",
    "novel_properties": [
      "unexpected deviation",
      "incorrect outcome"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The 1999 Mars Climate Orbiter burned up in the atmosphere due to a unit conversion error between NASA and Lockheed Martin.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "A single base pair deletion in the CFTR gene causes cystic fibrosis in humans.",
      "domain": "biology"
    },
    {
      "text": "In 2010, a typo in a Reuters news headline about Greece exiting the eurozone briefly crashed financial markets.",
      "domain": "economics"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "issue.problem",
      "note": "is-a",
      "type": "is-a"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "benefit-of-the-doubt.trust",
    "hindsight-is-twenty-twenty.retrospection",
    "red-flag.warning"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "error",
    "errors"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "openrouter:openai/gpt-oss-120b",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.6
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-error.mistake"
}