Misfire

//ˈmɪs.faɪ(ɹ)// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Uncommon ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An act of misfiring.
  2. 2
    a failure to hit (or meet or find etc.) wordnet
  3. 3
    A failure. figuratively

    "Amazon’s misfires with Alexa may have led Google astray, said a former manager who worked on Google Assistant."

  4. 4
    an explosion that fails to occur wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To fail to discharge properly.
  2. 2
    fail to fire or detonate wordnet
  3. 3
    To fail to ignite in the proper sequence.
  4. 4
    To initiate an action potential without the proper stimulus.
  5. 5
    To fail to achieve the anticipated result. broadly

    "His practical joke misfired and he nearly burnt my left hand."

Synonyms

All synonyms
missabortabortionabortive attemptblow upcome a cropper

Example

More examples

"Amazon’s misfires with Alexa may have led Google astray, said a former manager who worked on Google Assistant."

Etymology

Either a univerbation of earlier miss fire, or the compound mis- + fire (or possibly a confluence of both).

Related phrases

back firehang fire

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.