Word.ws English Dictionary

erred on the side of

erred on the side of is the simple past and past participle of err on the side of.

Meaning of err on the side of

Verb

err on the side of (third-person singular simple present errs on the side of, present participle erring on the side of, simple past and past participle erred on the side of)

  1. (idiomatic, transitive) To behave in a manner which favours or which is biased toward.
    • Every man would prefer that the woman in whom he feels an interest should err on the side of bigotry rather than on that of what is called liberalism in points of religious belief.1849, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 15, in The Sea Lions
  2. To choose which mistake (err) will be perpetuated when all available options would result in different mistakes.

Questions about erred on the side of

What is erred on the side of the simple past and past participle of?
Erred on the side of is the simple past and past participle of err on the side of.

Words near erred on the side of in the dictionary

  1. erratique
  2. erratum
  3. erraunt
  4. errday
  5. erred
  6. erred on the side of
  7. erred on the side of caution
  8. Errenteria
  9. Errera Channel
  10. errest
  11. erreth

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: erred on the side of (page history and authors); err on the side of (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “erred on the side of.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/erred_on_the_side_of. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.