diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
index 6caf1aa951c..9d219ca48fe 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/CHANGES.txt
@@ -143,6 +143,9 @@ Release 2.0.1-alpha - UNRELEASED
 
     HADOOP-8586. Fixup a bunch of SPNEGO misspellings. (eli)
 
+    HADOOP-3886. Error in javadoc of Reporter, Mapper and Progressable
+    (Jingguo Yao via harsh)
+
   BREAKDOWN OF HDFS-3042 SUBTASKS
 
     HADOOP-8220. ZKFailoverController doesn't handle failure to become active
diff --git a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/Progressable.java b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/Progressable.java
index e1f2cb9d957..495ca82b76e 100644
--- a/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/Progressable.java
+++ b/hadoop-common-project/hadoop-common/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/util/Progressable.java
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@
  * 
  * <p>Clients and/or applications can use the provided <code>Progressable</code>
  * to explicitly report progress to the Hadoop framework. This is especially
- * important for operations which take an insignificant amount of time since,
+ * important for operations which take significant amount of time since,
  * in-lieu of the reported progress, the framework has to assume that an error
  * has occured and time-out the operation.</p>
  */
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/Mapper.java b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/Mapper.java
index 2b1362c55c7..eaa6c2b72c4 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/Mapper.java
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/Mapper.java
@@ -144,7 +144,7 @@ public interface Mapper<K1, V1, K2, V2> extends JobConfigurable, Closeable {
    *
    * <p>Applications can use the {@link Reporter} provided to report progress 
    * or just indicate that they are alive. In scenarios where the application 
-   * takes an insignificant amount of time to process individual key/value 
+   * takes significant amount of time to process individual key/value
    * pairs, this is crucial since the framework might assume that the task has 
    * timed-out and kill that task. The other way of avoiding this is to set 
    * <a href="{@docRoot}/../mapred-default.html#mapreduce.task.timeout">
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/Reporter.java b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/Reporter.java
index 82ba71eb095..01a50b7f600 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/Reporter.java
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-core/src/main/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/Reporter.java
@@ -29,7 +29,7 @@
  * 
  * <p>{@link Mapper} and {@link Reducer} can use the <code>Reporter</code>
  * provided to report progress or just indicate that they are alive. In 
- * scenarios where the application takes an insignificant amount of time to 
+ * scenarios where the application takes significant amount of time to
  * process individual key/value pairs, this is crucial since the framework 
  * might assume that the task has timed-out and kill that task.
  *