Word.ws English Dictionary

mis-

mis- prefix: bad or wrong; badly or wrongly.

Prefix

mis-

  1. Bad or wrong; badly or wrongly.
    • misbehaviour; misspelling; to misbehave
    Synonyms:
    mal-
    1. Incorrect; incorrectly.
      • misidentification; to misidentify
  2. Failed; in a manner resulting in failure (to do, complete or achieve something).
    • miscarriage (failed carriage of a pregnancy to term), to miscarry, to misacknowledge
    Synonyms:
    dis-, dys-
  3. Unintentional, accidental, mistaken; unintentionally, accidentally, mistakenly.
    • Yes, I did "Buy now", but it was a misclick.
    • I misclicked something on my computer, and now everything is in Hungarian!
    Synonyms:
    mal-
  4. False, falsely.
    • misaccusation, to misaccuse
    Synonyms:
    pseudo-

Synonyms of mis-

Origin of mis-

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.

Questions about mis-

What does mis- mean?
Mis- means bad or wrong; badly or wrongly.
What part of speech is mis-?
Mis- is a prefix.

Words near mis- in the dictionary

  1. Mirzo Tursunzoda
  2. Mirăslău
  3. Mirșid
  4. MIS
  5. mis lit
  6. mis-
  7. mis-apostrophize
  8. mis-apostrophized
  9. mis-apostrophizes
  10. mis-apostrophizing
  11. mis-association

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mis- (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.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “mis-.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mis-. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.