English

Noun

thinko ‎(plural thinkos)

1. (slang, neologism) A careless mistake made in thinking.

   I must have done quite a thinko, but I don't remember leaving my keys in the refrigerator.

   • 1998, K. G. Binmore, Game Theory and the Social Contract, Volume 2: Just Playing, page 34,

     We need to face the fact that thinkos are likely to be much more important, even though such a source of noise is much harder to model.

   • 2006, Kristen B. Donohue, Misused Words and Other Witing Gaffes: A Manager's Primer, Harvard Business School, Written Communications that Inform and Influence, page 164,

     Spell-checkers can help with simple types such as misspellings and repeated words, but they are little defense against the equally common "thinkos," such as the inconvenience/incontinence example above. Your only defense against thinkos is a careful read.

   • 2008, Kurt Wall, Tcl and Tk Programming for the Absolute Beginner, page 134,

     I don't know about you, but I don't want to grovel through a bunch of code blocks to track down a typo or thinko.

   • 2009, Geoff Nunberg, Going Nucular: Language, Politics, and Culture in Confrontational Times, page 59,

     There are two kinds of linguistic missteps, the typos and the thinkos. Typos are the processing glitches that intercede between a thought and its expression. They can make you look foolish, but they aren't really the signs of an intellectual or ethical deficiency, the way thinkos are.

Synonyms

• (mistake): blooper, blunder, boo-boo, brain fart, defect, error, fault, faux pas, fluff, gaffe, lapse, mistake, slip, stumble
  • See also Wikisaurus:error

Coordinate terms

• clicko, scanno, speako, spello, typo, writo