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most vexing parse

most vexing parse noun: a specific form of syntactic ambiguity resolution in the C++ programming language, whereby attempts to declare a variable may be undesirably interpreted as attempts to declare a function.

Noun

most vexing parse

  1. A specific form of syntactic ambiguity resolution in the C++ programming language, whereby attempts to declare a variable may be undesirably interpreted as attempts to declare a function.

Origin of most vexing parse

The phrase was introduced by Scott Meyers in Effective STL (2001).

Questions about most vexing parse

What does most vexing parse mean?
Most vexing parse means a specific form of syntactic ambiguity resolution in the C++ programming language, whereby attempts to declare a variable may be undesirably interpreted as attempts to declare a function.
What part of speech is most vexing parse?
Most vexing parse is a noun.

Words near most vexing parse in the dictionary

  1. most significant bits
  2. most significant byte
  3. most significant bytes
  4. most valuable player
  5. most valuable players
  6. most vexing parse
  7. most wanted
  8. most wanteds
  9. most-perfect magic square
  10. most-perfect magic squares
  11. Most.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: most vexing parse (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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