Idiom
slip of the tongue
Meaning
A mistake in speech.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“It was just a slip of the tongue — I meant to say 'June'.”
“When she called her new boss by her ex-husband's name, she apologized and said it was a slip of the tongue.”
“In the heated debate, the senator's unfortunate slip of the tongue was clipped and circulated online within minutes.”
Examples
simple
“It was just a slip of the tongue — I meant to say 'June'.”
contextual
“When she called her new boss by her ex-husband's name, she apologized and said it was a slip of the tongue.”
complex
“In the heated debate, the senator's unfortunate slip of the tongue was clipped and circulated online within minutes.”
Origin
The phrase appears in English as a calque of the Latin lapsus linguae, preserving the literal mechanics of the original expression. It functions as a direct translation, substituting the Latin components with their English equivalents to describe a verbal error.
Key words
Related idioms
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