Word.ws English Dictionary

get the wrong idea

get the wrong idea verb: to get the wrong end of the stick.

Verb

get the wrong idea (third-person singular simple present gets the wrong idea, present participle getting the wrong idea, simple past got the wrong idea, past participle (US) gotten the wrong idea or (UK) got the wrong idea)

  1. To get the wrong end of the stick
    • I’ve heard that lawyers’ children, on seeing their parents in court in the heat of argument, get the wrong idea: they think opposing counsel to be the personal enemies of their parents, they suffer agonies, and are surprised to see them often go out arm-in-arm with their tormenters during the first...1960 July 11, Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Philadelphia, Pa.; New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, →OCLC

Forms of get the wrong idea

third-person singular presentgets the wrong idea
present participlegetting the wrong idea
pastgot the wrong idea
past participle USgotten the wrong idea
past participle UKgot the wrong idea

Questions about get the wrong idea

What does get the wrong idea mean?
Get the wrong idea means to get the wrong end of the stick.
What part of speech is get the wrong idea?
Get the wrong idea is a verb.
What is the past tense of get the wrong idea?
The past tense of get the wrong idea is got the wrong idea.

Words near get the wrong idea in the dictionary

  1. get the vapours
  2. get the wall
  3. get the wind up
  4. get the word out
  5. get the worst of it
  6. get the wrong idea
  7. get thee behind me
  8. get there
  9. get this
  10. get through
  11. get through one's head

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: get the wrong idea (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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