The expression e must have both a blah type and also…

This error occurs sometimes when two incompatible types meet: the context in which an expression is used requires it to have a certain type, whereas the expression actually has a different type.

For example, consider the following:

Disco> x : N
Disco> x = 5
Disco> x(2)
Error: the expression
  x
must have both a function type and also the incompatible type
  .

In this example, the reason x must have a function type is because we applied it to an argument, like x(2). The only things which can be applied to arguments are functions. On the other hand, we said that the type of x is N, whch is not a function.