blunder
Americannoun
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blunders
plural
verb (used without object)
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blunders,
present (3rd person singular)
-
blundered,
past participle, past
-
blundering
present participle
-
to move or act blindly, stupidly, or without direction or steady guidance.
Without my glasses I blundered into the wrong room.
-
to make a gross or stupid mistake, especially through carelessness or mental confusion.
Just pray that he doesn't blunder again and get the names wrong.
verb (used with object)
-
blunders,
present (3rd person singular)
-
blundered,
past participle, past
-
blundering
present participle
-
to bungle; botch.
Several of the accounts were blundered by that new assistant.
-
to utter thoughtlessly; blurt out.
He blundered his surprise at their winning the award.
noun
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a stupid or clumsy mistake
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a foolish tactless remark
verb
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to make stupid or clumsy mistakes
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to make foolish tactless remarks
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to act clumsily; stumble
he blundered into a situation he knew nothing about
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(tr) to mismanage; botch
Synonym Usage
See mistake.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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blunderernoun
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blunderingnoun
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superblundernoun
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outblunderverb (used with object)
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nonblunderingadjective
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unblunderingadjective
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blunderinglyadverb
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nonblunderinglyadverb
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
blundersimple
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blunderssimple
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have blunderedperfect
-
has blunderedperfect
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am blunderingprogressive
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are blunderingprogressive
-
is blunderingprogressive
-
have been blunderingperfect progressive
-
has been blunderingperfect progressive
Past
-
blunderedsimple
-
had blunderedperfect
-
was blunderingprogressive
-
were blunderingprogressive
-
had been blunderingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of blunder
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English blunderen, blondren (verb), from Old Norse blunda “to shut one's eyes, nap”; compare Norwegian dialect blundra
Explanation
A blunder is an embarrassing mistake. Accidentally called your new boyfriend by your old boyfriend's name? Ouch. That's a blunder you don't want to repeat. Has an embarrassing mistake ever made you feel like you’re stumbling around with your eyes closed? If so, it won’t surprise you to learn that blunder comes from the Old Norse word blundra, meaning to “shut one's eyes.” It wasn’t until the eighteenth century that blunder came to refer to a stupid or embarrassing mistake, or as a verb, to describe making such a mistake, as in “I tend to blunder when I'm nervous.”
Vocabulary lists containing blunder
"The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant
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100 SAT Words Beginning with "B"
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English Words Derived from Old Norse
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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.
See Examples For:
He would later tell friends that introducing it had been his "greatest blunder."
From Science Daily ● Aug. 18, 2026
A press conference took place a few days later, where MacDougall and colleague Cdr Greg Burns were grilled over the blunder.
From BBC ● Aug. 10, 2026
“Iran has definitely taken a hit, but I do think the war was a strategic blunder because it has made Iran stronger in many ways,” said Dina Esfandiary, an Iran expert at Bloomberg Economics.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026
The blunder was made by Rahmi Koc at the opening of a hospital in the western resort city of Izmir late Friday, but when the footage started circulating online it caused a backlash.
From Barron's ● Jun. 6, 2026
He called it "the biggest blunder of my life."
From "A Short History of Nearly Everything" by Bill Bryson
There were mighty blunders off the field too under Jarmond, including an email that went out to donors that came with an attachment revealing personal information and spending tallies of the department’s biggest donors.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 1, 2026
Turning baseball into the Dodgers versus the Dodger-nots is a convenient way to obscure your own blunders.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 3, 2026
It used to be far easier to spot computer-generated visual creations - often used by fraudsters - because AI would make blunders, like adding an extra finger or something else that was obviously weird.
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026
It was one of the German chancellor’s worst strategic blunders.
From Salon ● May 21, 2026
I had heard of the foolish blunders that small-town boys made when they went to big cities and I wanted to be very cautious.
From "Black Boy" by Richard Wright
They assumed it sensed danger, but it was actually steering them: They blundered into a goose nest, scattering the frightened adults.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 22, 2026
Martinez might have escaped justice, but he blundered.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 19, 2025
"It should have been drawn, but Ding blundered as the pressure grew."
From BBC ● Dec. 12, 2024
Addressing some 100 C.I.A. officials on March 19, Mr. Burns acknowledged how the agency catastrophically blundered in its assessment that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
From New York Times ● May 9, 2023
In subsequent moves Geller blundered badly, and Fischer won the game, beating a man who’d become a personal nemesis.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
Her hopes of justice were raised ahead of the court case in 2003, only to be let down by legal "blundering".
From BBC ● Jan. 29, 2026
Leafy speaks for all of the author’s blundering characters when, at one low ebb, he sums himself up as “an aristocrat of pain and frustration, a prince of anguish and embarrassment.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 12, 2025
“It’s true that by blundering about we stumbled on gold, but the fact remains that we were looking for gold.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 7, 2025
Naive, blundering hobbyists and reckless pranksters can also veer into restricted airspace, setting off alarms and potentially shutting down airport traffic.
From Barron's ● Oct. 14, 2025
He left the road, blundering through the trees toward the light.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
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.
