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A howler is a glaring blunder, typically an amusing one. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' defines ''howler'', "3.3 ''slang''. Something 'crying', 'clamant', or excessive; spec. a glaring blunder, esp. in an examination, etc.", and gives the earliest usage example in 1872.〔''Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition on CD-ROM'', Version 4.0, Oxford University Press (2009).〕 Eric Partridge's ''Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English'' says; the 1951 edition of Partridge defined it in part as: "... A glaring (and amusing) blunder: from before 1890; ... also, a tremendous lie ... Literally something that howls or cries for notice, or perhaps ... by way of contracting ''howling blunder''." Another common interpretation of this usage is that a howler is a mistake fit to make one howl with laughter.〔McArthur, Tom & McArthur, Roshan. The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language. Page 446. Publisher: Oxford University Press 1996 ISBN 978-0198631361〕 ==Equivalent terms== All over the world, probably in all natural languages, there are many informal terms for blunders; the English term "howler" occurs in many translating dictionaries.〔Marie-Helene Correard, Valerie Grundy, Jean-Benoit Ormal-Grenon and Nicholas Rollin. Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary. Publisher: Oxford University Press 2007. ISBN 978-0198614227〕〔M. Clark and O. Thyen. The Oxford-Duden German Dictionary. Publisher: Oxford University Press 1999. ISBN 978-0198602484〕 There are other colloquial English words for ''howler'' in the sense dealt with in this article, in particular the mainly United States and Canadian slang term ''boner'' which has various interpretations, including that of blunder. Like ''howler'', ''boner'' can be used in any sense to mean an ignominious and usually laughable blunder, and also like ''howler'', it has been used in the titles of published collections of largely schoolboy blunders since at least the 1930s. ''Boner'' is another colloquialism that means much the same as ''howler'' in the context of this article, but its other meanings differ. For one thing, ''boner'' is not traditionally used as a general intensifier or for specifically describing an accident or the like, as ''howler'' and ''howling'' are. Assorted other terms have much longer histories and some of them are not regarded as slang. For example ''Bull'' and ''Blunder'' have long been used in similar senses, each with its own overtones and assorted extraneous meanings. ''Bulls and Blunders'', an American book published in the 1890s,〔Brown, Marshall; Bulls and Blunders; S. C. Griggs & Co. Chicago, 2nd ed. 1894〕 uses the word ''howler'' only once, in the passage: "Miss A. C. Graham, of Annerley, has received a prize from the ''University Correspondent'' for the best collection of schoolboy ''howlers''". Although he did not otherwise use the word himself, the author did not define a term so familiar on both sides of the Atlantic even at that time. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Howler (error)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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