blue screen of death

noun

variants or less commonly Blue Screen of Death

plural blue screens of death also Blue Screens of Death

: a screen (see screen entry 1 sense 4b) that usually consists of an error message displayed in white text on a solid blue background and that occurs when an electronic device has encountered an error from which it cannot recover

RAM problems can lead to application crashes, file corruption, and the dreaded blue screen of death.

—Chris Hoffman

Assuming you're not yet running Windows 10, you'll get a blue screen filled with intimidating text. Microsoft calls this a Stop Error, but everyone else prefers a more descriptive term: The Blue Screen of Death …

—Lincoln Spector and Ian Paul

Even now, the Blue Screen of Death is a semi-regular phenomenon for most Windows users.

—Ben Allen

The blue screen of death was traditionally something that PC users were all too familiar with. If you saw a blue screen of death on a PC, it usually meant that you would lose what you were working on—the horror!

—Karen Haslam

called also BSOD, BSoD

Word History

First Known Use

1993, in the meaning defined above