erroneously
Americanadverb
-
incorrectly; wrongly.
For years I recorded my birth date erroneously as July 1, until I discovered from my father’s diary that it was actually July 30.
-
by mistake; unintentionally.
I just posted these comments again because they were erroneously wiped out the first time due to a technical issue.
Other Word Forms
- nonerroneously adverb
Etymology
Origin of erroneously
Explanation
If you’ve done something erroneously, you’ve made a mistake or accidentally given out wrong information. If you erroneously accuse your brother of eating the last slice of your pecan pie, then you’re wrong: he didn’t do it. Erroneously traces back to the Latin word errare, meaning “to stray, err.” If something’s done erroneously, you can think of it as straying from the right path and ending up going in the wrong direction. If you erroneously report to the IRS that you only made $500 last year and you really made $10,000, well, that’s a big mistake. If you do something erroneously, it’s typically by accident — you think it’s right but it isn’t.
Vocabulary lists containing erroneously
Stamped
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There’s Something about Sweetie
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Not Like Other Girls
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
AI detectors, for example, have a tendency to erroneously flag essays written by speakers of English as a second language, a 2023 Stanford analysis External link found.
From Barron's • Apr. 14, 2026
Its explanation, however, in effect said that AI didn’t generate the troublesome software coding itself, but did give an engineer instructions about how to write the code — erroneously.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 30, 2026
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also erroneously stated that you can’t bring a gun to a protest.
From Salon • Jan. 25, 2026
A widely circulated WhatsApp message claims erroneously that Macaulay gave a speech before the British Parliament in which he vowed to “break the very backbone” of India by replacing its “ancient education system.”
From The Wall Street Journal • Dec. 3, 2025
On the negative side, arts teachers are seen as separate “specialists,” which erroneously relieves the classroom teacher of any responsibility for incorporating the arts into the daily classroom experience.
From "Music and the Child" by Natalie Sarrazin
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
