false step

American  

noun

1. a stumble.

2. an unwise or blundering act.

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false step British  

noun

1. an unwise action

2. a stumble; slip

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false step Idioms  

1. A stumble or blunder, as in Making a down payment without securing a mortgage was clearly a false step. This term transfers physical stumbling or tripping to other enterprises. [c. 1700]

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Example Sentences

Rather, it’s the poignant devastation of knowing one false step or bad decision could reshape your life that knocks us over.

From Salon • Apr. 13, 2025

Instead of jumping into his assignment right away, Rivera said, Davis could have baited the lineman with an intentionally false step, forced him to overcommit and used his athleticism to evade the block altogether.

From Washington Post • Dec. 14, 2022

Not everything works in the staging: When the action is this exposed, any false step is magnified.

From New York Times • Nov. 21, 2021

That left hand is all over the place, dancing across the entire lower registry of the instrument, perfectly in time and never making a false step.

From Slate • Jun. 7, 2019

If you think about it hard enough, if you trace potential reverberations long enough, every step can be a false step, any move can lead to an unintended consequence.

From "Every Day" by David Levithan