Misplace

//mɪsˈpleɪs// verb

verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Verb
  1. 1
    To put something somewhere and then forget its location; to mislay. transitive

    "I might have misplaced my umbrella; do you know where it is?"

  2. 2
    place or position wrongly; put in the wrong position wordnet
  3. 3
    To apply one's talents inappropriately. figuratively

    "Bart Groothuijze, who runs the Castodian foundation promoting safer motorbiking, blames a misplaced sense of freedom and vanity."

  4. 4
    place (something) where one cannot find it again wordnet
  5. 5
    To put something in the wrong location.

    "Every word in English of more than one Syllable has a fixed accent established by the custom of the language, to misplace which is as offensive to the propriety of speech, as to missound the vowel."

Synonyms

All synonyms
mislaylosedefaultdisarrangedisplacedrop

Example

More examples

"Are you certain that you lost your book, or did you merely misplace it?"

Etymology

From mis- + place.

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