Mis-
prefix ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 Bad or wrong; badly or wrongly. morpheme
"misbehaviour; misspelling; to misbehave"
- 2 Bad or wrong; badly or wrongly.; Incorrect; incorrectly. morpheme
"misidentification; to misidentify"
- 3 Failed; in a manner resulting in failure (to do, complete or achieve something). morpheme
"miscarriage (failed carriage of a pregnancy to term), to miscarry, to misacknowledge"
- 4 Unintentional, accidental, mistaken; unintentionally, accidentally, mistakenly. morpheme
"Yes, I did "Buy now", but it was a misclick."
- 5 False, falsely. morpheme
"misaccusation, to misaccuse"
Example
More examples"misbehaviour; misspelling; to misbehave"
Etymology
From Middle English mys-, mis-, from Old English mis- (“mis-”), from Proto-West Germanic *missa-, from Proto-Germanic *missa- (“wrongly, badly, mis-”), from the adjective *missaz (whence also miss), from Proto-Indo-European *mitˢtós (“mutual, reciprocal”), from *meyt(h₂)- (“to replace, switch, exchange, swap”), extended from the root *mey- (“to change”). Cognate with Scots mis- (“mis-”), Dutch mis- (“mis-”), German miss-, mis- (“mis-”), Danish mis- (“mis-”), Swedish miss- (“mis-”), Icelandic mis- (“mis-”). Compare also French més-, mé- (“mis-”), from Old French mes- (“mis-”), from Frankish *mis-, *missa- (“mis-”), from the same Proto-Germanic source above.
More for "mis-"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.