error message

British

noun

a message displayed on a visual display unit, printout, etc, indicating that an incorrect instruction has been given to the computer

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

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.

Posting the link on Facebook now triggers an error message saying: “Posts that look like spam according to our Community Guidelines are blocked on Facebook and can’t be edited.”

From Slate • Jan. 28, 2026

The link to her official Instagram account leads to an error message.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 13, 2026

The Morrisons website also appears to be down, with a "502 bad gateway" error message on some pages.

From BBC • Dec. 23, 2024

Many claimed the release itself was one big scam after they were met with an error message upon clicking the link to enter the giveaway.

From Salon • Aug. 22, 2024

Or we can punch the numbers into our calculators and see the error message ourselves.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023