boner
noun
Boner — a dated colloquial term for a foolish, embarrassing mistake
Definition
An embarrassing mistake
In depth
A boner, in this older and now largely outdated sense, names an embarrassing mistake, particularly a foolish or careless one. The word has become considerably rarer in this meaning due to its now far more common and entirely unrelated slang sense, requiring writers to use it, if at all, with considerable awareness of likely confusion or unintended comedy.
Origin
The word's origin in this older sense is uncertain, possibly related to 'bone-headed,' an earlier slang term for foolish or stupid. Its near-total semantic displacement by an unrelated modern slang sense illustrates how thoroughly a word's dominant meaning can shift within a single generation, leaving its earlier usage nearly unrecognizable to contemporary readers.
Usage examples
"Older newspaper archives occasionally use boner in print to describe an editor's embarrassing factual error, a usage that reads quite differently to modern audiences."
"Vintage comic strips often featured a character whose comic boners drove much of the story's humor."
"Historical slang dictionaries note that boner once simply meant a foolish, careless mistake, with no other connotation at all."
How to use it
This sense of boner is now almost entirely obsolete and likely to cause unintended confusion or amusement in contemporary writing, given the word's now-dominant unrelated slang meaning; writers should generally avoid it except in clearly historical or archival contexts.
Related concepts
Looking for a word but don't know its name?
Try the Word Finder →