Word.ws English Dictionary

bark at the wrong tree

bark at the wrong tree is the misconstruction of bark up the wrong tree.

Meaning of bark up the wrong tree

Verb

bark up the wrong tree (third-person singular simple present barks up the wrong tree, present participle barking up the wrong tree, simple past and past participle barked up the wrong tree)

  1. (idiomatic) To take the wrong approach to a situation; to follow a false lead; to attempt to solve a problem using mistaken assumptions about its true nature.
    • The investigator spent days trying to prove the butler committed the murder, but it turns out he was barking up the wrong tree.

Forms of bark at the wrong tree

third-person singular presentbarks at the wrong tree
present participlebarking at the wrong tree
past participlebarked at the wrong tree
pastbarked at the wrong tree

Questions about bark at the wrong tree

What is bark at the wrong tree the misconstruction of?
Bark at the wrong tree is the misconstruction of bark up the wrong tree.

Words near bark at the wrong tree in the dictionary

  1. bariums
  2. Bariw
  3. Barjarg
  4. bark
  5. bark at print
  6. bark at the wrong tree
  7. bark bed
  8. bark beds
  9. bark beetle
  10. bark beetles
  11. bark bread

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bark at the wrong tree (page history and authors); bark up the wrong tree (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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