Word.ws English Dictionary

misalter

misalter verb: to make a change that leaves (something) worse than before.

Verb

misalter (third-person singular simple present misalters, present participle misaltering, simple past and past participle misaltered)

  1. (transitive) To make a change that leaves (something) worse than before.
    • These are all, besides those which I fore-specified, which have so "misaltered" the liturgy, that it can no more be known to be itself than the strangely-disguised dames which were mentioned in doctor Hall's reproof.1863, Works - Volume 9 -, page 403
    • The tailors were busily at work for the men ; fitting and misfitting, altering and misaltering, and making clothes in every possible way except the right one, for right the clothes of man will never be so long as ever they are intended to fit.1873, The Coming Man - Volume 1, page 183

Forms of misalter

third-person singular presentmisalters
present participlemisaltering
past participlemisaltered
pastmisaltered

Origin of misalter

From mis- + alter.

Questions about misalter

What does misalter mean?
Misalter means to make a change that leaves (something) worse than before.
What part of speech is misalter?
Misalter is a verb.
What is the past tense of misalter?
The past tense of misalter is misaltered.

Words near misalter in the dictionary

  1. misallowances
  2. misally
  3. misallying
  4. misalphabetized
  5. misals
  6. misalter
  7. misaltered
  8. misaltering
  9. misalters
  10. misaminoacylate
  11. misaminoacylated

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: misalter (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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