Meaning of err on the side of | Babel Free

Definitions

1. To behave in a manner which favours or which is biased toward.
   idiomatic, transitive
2. To choose which mistake (err) will be perpetuated when all available options would result in different mistakes.

Examples

“Every man would prefer that the woman in whom he feels an interest should err on the side of bigotry rather than on that of what is called liberalism in points of religious belief.”

“My case is, as I have told you, almost complete; but we must not err on the side of over-confidence.”

“But perhaps you tend to err on the side of severity. Perhaps you make too little allowance for human weakness.”

“Let us err, then, if we err, on the side of liberty.”

“She loved to read poetry and when she got a keepsake from Bertha Supple of that lovely confession album with the coralpink cover to write her thoughts in she laid it in the drawer of her toilettable which, though it did not err on the side of luxury, was scrupulously neat and clean.”

CEFR level