the.com/mistake
Proof you were doing something instead of nothing.
means An action or judgment that went wrong — something done or believed incorrectly, usually without meaning to.
from From Old Norse 'mistaka,' literally 'to take wrongly' — 'mis-' (amiss, wrongly) plus 'taka' (to take). It entered English through Middle English 'mistaken,' originally meaning to misunderstand or seize the wrong thing, before settling into its modern sense of any error or slip.
- literal sense
- originally meant to misunderstand, not to err
- legal cousin
- mistake of fact can excuse liability in court
- aviation term
- pilots call small errors deviations, not mistakes, on purpose
- science reframe
- researchers rebrand mistakes as data points constantly