English · Idiom Candidate

slip of the tongue

Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.

Both English Tiếng Việt

Meaning · English

An unintentional utterance, often revealing a truth or secret

Nghĩa · Tiếng Việt

lời nói vô tình, thường tiết lộ sự thật hoặc bí mật

Machine-translated — suggest a fix

Literally: a slip of the tongue

Where it’s used: Used Widespread English

Examples

Much of the humour derives from slips of the tongue, an occupational hazard.

‘ Perhaps it was an unfortunate slip of the tongue,’ said Mr Bergg.

British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)

Sources & notes

Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.

Topics: Mouth & tongue

Common questions

What does “slip of the tongue” mean?

An unintentional utterance, often revealing a truth or secret Literally: a slip of the tongue

Is “slip of the tongue” formal or informal?

No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.

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