Word.ws English Dictionary

misbegotten

UK/ˌmɪsbɪˈɡɒtn̩/US/ˌmɪsbɪˈɡɑtn̩/

misbegotten adjective: born out of wedlock; illegitimate. Also the past participle of misbeget.

Adjective

misbegotten (comparative more misbegotten, superlative most misbegotten)

  1. Born out of wedlock; illegitimate.
    • But as the Deuill would haue it, three miſ-be-gotten Knaues, in Kendall Greene, came at my Back, […]c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...
    • “Foolish woman!” responded the physician, half coldly, half soothingly. “What should ail me to harm this misbegotten and miserable babe? The medicine is potent for good, and were it my child—yea, mine own, as well as thine! I could do no better for it.”1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, a Romance, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC
  2. (broadly, figuratively) Ill-conceived.
    • Many of the strangest, most misbegotten studio films of the last 20 years have been comedies, perhaps because middle-aged executives have no comprehension of what the younger generation finds funny.2012 March 22, Scott Tobias, “Cabin Boy”, in The A.V. Club
  3. (broadly) Bad; worthless.
    • Rather, as there was something abnormal and misbegotten in the very essence of the creature that now faced me—something seizing, surprising and revolting—this fresh disparity seemed but to fit in with and to rëinforce it;[…]1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Dr. Lanyon’s Narrative”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 100
    • "Do they not sneakingly bestow on me their crass inability to do anything with their own misbegotten progeny, a subterfuge which I scornfully fub off on text-books?"1930, Norman Lindsay, Redheap, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, →OCLC, page 82

Noun

misbegotten (plural misbegotten)

  1. (derogatory, obsolete, sometimes) One born illegitimately (i.e., out of wedlock); a bastard.
  2. (broadly, in plural) A person born into infelicitous circumstances.
    • By preserving the incapable and “misbegotten”, and by insisting that they be the object of compassionate attention, it would cause even the strong to be infected with gloom and nihilism.1973, Philippa Foot, “Nietzsche: The Revaluation of Values”, in Robert C. Solomon, Garden City, New York, editors, Nietzsche: A Collection of Critical Essays, Anchor Books, →ISBN, page 161

Also used as

misbegotten is also the past participle of misbeget.

Forms of misbegotten

Adjective
comparativemore misbegotten
superlativemost misbegotten
Noun
pluralmisbegotten

Origin of misbegotten

From mis- + begotten.

Questions about misbegotten

What does misbegotten mean?
Misbegotten means born out of wedlock; illegitimate.
What part of speech is misbegotten?
Misbegotten can be an adjective or a noun.
How do you pronounce misbegotten?
Misbegotten is pronounced /ˌmɪsbɪˈɡɒtn̩/ (UK).

Words near misbegotten in the dictionary

  1. misbefitting
  2. misbeget
  3. misbegets
  4. misbegetting
  5. misbegot
  6. misbegotten
  7. misbegun
  8. misbehadden
  9. misbehave
  10. misbehaved
  11. misbehaver

Source and license

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