Word.ws English Dictionary

lapsus plumæ

UK/ˌlæpsəsˈpluːmiː/

lapsus plumæ noun: synonym of slip of the pen.

Noun

lapsus plumæ (plural lapsus plumæ)

  1. (formal) Synonym of slip of the pen.
    • Near-synonyms: writo; miswriting; misprint; typo
    • When he came to a word like believe, he was cunning enough to write two ees, and put a dot just over the middle of them, leaving the reader to imagine that his error was the result of a mere lapsus plumæ.1844, Suum Cuique [pseud.: Joseph Hewlett], “The Nice Young Man” in Hood’s Magazine and Comic Miscellany I, page 552

Synonyms of lapsus plumæ

Forms of lapsus plumæ

plurallapsus plumæ
alternative formlapsus plumae

Origin of lapsus plumæ

First attested in 1844; Latin: lāpsus (“a slipping”; in the plural lāpsūs, “slippings”, the nominative plural form of lāpsus) + plūmae (“of the feather or plume”, the genitive singular form of plūma, “feather”, “plume”) = “a slipping of the feather” ≈ “a lapse of the plume” ≈ “a slip of the quill”; compare lapsus linguae and the English-coined French phrase nom de plume.

Questions about lapsus plumæ

What does lapsus plumæ mean?
Lapsus plumæ means synonym of slip of the pen.
What part of speech is lapsus plumæ?
Lapsus plumæ is a noun.
How do you pronounce lapsus plumæ?
Lapsus plumæ is pronounced /ˌlæpsəsˈpluːmiː/ (UK).
What is the plural of lapsus plumæ?
The plural of lapsus plumæ is lapsus plumæ.

Words near lapsus plumæ in the dictionary

  1. lapsus linguæ
  2. lapsus memoriae
  3. lapsus oculi
  4. lapsus pennæ
  5. lapsus plumae
  6. lapsus plumæ
  7. lapt
  8. lapta
  9. Laptev Sea
  10. lapti
  11. laptime

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lapsus plumæ (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: “lapsus plumæ.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/lapsus_plum%C3%A6. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.