gaffe

gaffe \gaf\, noun:

a blunder; faux pas

Torii Hunter was in full mea culpa mode Friday, taking responsibility for Wednesday night's gaffe, when he forgot there were only two outs, pulled up between second and third base and was tagged out in a rundown against the New York Mets.
-- Mike Digiovanna, Los Angeles Times, 6/21/2008

The Mountain View company acknowledged the financial gaffe in a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying the unintended notes revealed a projection that advertising revenue will grow to $9.5 billion in 2006, up 58 percent from the previous year.
-- Verne Kopytoff, San Francisco Chronicle, 3/8/2006

So this is what they mean by the soft bigotry of low expectations. The weeklong drumbeat that led to the vice presidential debate suggested it would be a matchup between an airhead and a gaffe machine.
-- Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe, 10/3/2008

by 1909, from French gaffe "clumsy remark," originally "boat hook," from Old French gaffe, from Old Provencal gaf, probably from Gothic gafa "hook," but this origin is obscure. It may derive from British slang gaff "to cheat, trick" (1893) or gaff "criticism" (1896), from Scottish dialect sense of "loud, rude talk," which ultimately may be from Old English gaf-spr¾c "blasphemous or ribald speech."