errors

1. 1
   noun

   Plural of error.

   The accountant flagged a handful of errors in last quarter's figures.

   Repeated measurement errors made the experiment impossible to reproduce.

   Note

   A regular plural, but only half the noun takes it. The countable meanings pluralize freely: mistakes, gaps between a measured value and a true one, and plays scored as made incorrectly. The uncountable meaning, the state of being wrong, stays singular, as in in error. A report can be full of errors, but a person who is mistaken is simply in error, never in errors.

2. 2
   verb

   Third-person singular simple present indicative of error.

   The script errors out the moment it encounters an unexpected character.

   If the sensor errors, the system automatically switches to a backup reading.

   Note

   Mostly a machine's verb: a program or device errors when it malfunctions and reports a fault, often in the phrasal errors out. The spelling is shared with the noun plural, so the surrounding sentence decides which is meant. When the subject is a person, errs is the safer choice (she errs, not she errors), because using error to mean "err" is nonstandard.

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