diff --git a/Doc/library/rlcompleter.rst b/Doc/library/rlcompleter.rst
index b882cb0e9bb..6816d391049 100644
--- a/Doc/library/rlcompleter.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/rlcompleter.rst
@@ -61,5 +61,6 @@ Completer objects have the following method:
    If called for a dotted name, it will try to evaluate anything without obvious
    side-effects (functions will not be evaluated, but it can generate calls to
    :meth:`__getattr__`) up to the last part, and find matches for the rest via the
-   :func:`dir` function.
+   :func:`dir` function.  Any exception raised during the evaluation of the 
+   expression is caught, silenced and :const:`None` is returned.
 
diff --git a/Lib/rlcompleter.py b/Lib/rlcompleter.py
index a2d5fe6a8f0..36965e6eecc 100644
--- a/Lib/rlcompleter.py
+++ b/Lib/rlcompleter.py
@@ -127,7 +127,10 @@ class Completer:
         if not m:
             return []
         expr, attr = m.group(1, 3)
-        object = eval(expr, self.namespace)
+        try:
+            object = eval(expr, self.namespace)
+        except Exception:
+            return []
         words = dir(object)
         if hasattr(object,'__class__'):
             words.append('__class__')
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 4fd972a1fa5..f843f2a1601 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -23,6 +23,9 @@ Extension Modules
 Library
 -------
 
+- #2250: Exceptions raised during evaluation of names in rlcompleter's
+  ``Completer.complete()`` method are now caught and ignored.
+
 - #2659: Added ``break_on_hyphens`` option to textwrap TextWrapper class.
 
 - The mhlib module has been deprecated for removal in Python 3.0.