Word.ws English Dictionary

miscall

UK/mɪskɔːl/

miscall verb: to call (someone) bad names; to insult, abuse. Also the archaic form of miskal.

Verb

miscall (third-person singular simple present miscalls, present participle miscalling, simple past and past participle miscalled)

  1. (dialectal) To call (someone) bad names; to insult, abuse.
    • But one aboue the rest in speciall, / That had an hog beene late, hight Grille by name, / Repined greatly, and did him miscall, / That had from hoggish forme him brought to naturall.1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto XII”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC
    • He there exhorts us to hear with patience and humility those, however they be miscall'd, that desire to live purely, in such a use of Gods Ordinances, as the best guidance of their conscience gives them, and to tolerat them, though in some disconformity to our selves.1644, John Milton, Areopagitica
  2. To call (someone or something) incorrectly or by the wrong title or name.
    • I can believe such an instance—can believe love taking strong root amid cruelty, poverty, suffering, and danger, rather than in the withering atmosphere of this crowded city—this miscalled social, but really heartless, life; where petty interests distract the mind, and mean desires absorb the heart.1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XV, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume II, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 174
    • ‘In this country, peasants miscall it “Cowslip,” though of course the true Cowslip, Primula veris, is a different plant altogether.’1969, Vladimir Nabokov, Ada or Ardor, Penguin, published 2011, page 48
    Synonyms:
    misname
  3. To announce the result of an election incorrectly.
    • The networks soon discovered that they had miscalled Florida, based, so it was later explained, on important errors and miscalculations made from their combined pool source of information, the Voter News Service.2002, A.E. Busch, J.W. Ceasar, The Perfect Tie: The True Story of the 2000 Presidential Election, Rowman & Littlefield, page 10
  4. To announce one's hand of cards incorrectly.
    • When the loser thinks he has the hand beat he turns over his hand only to find that the winner has miscalled his hand, and since "cards speak," the miscaller wins.1983, David M. Hayano, Poker Faces: The Life and Work of Professional Card Players, page 59

Noun

miscall (plural miscalls)

  1. An incorrect call.

Also used as

miscall is also the archaic form of miskal.

Synonyms of miscall

Forms of miscall

Verb
third-person singular presentmiscalls
present participlemiscalling
past participlemiscalled
pastmiscalled
Noun
pluralmiscalls

Origin of miscall

From Middle English miscallen, equivalent to mis- + call.

Words formed from miscall

Questions about miscall

What does miscall mean?
Miscall means to call (someone) bad names; to insult, abuse.
What part of speech is miscall?
Miscall can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce miscall?
Miscall is pronounced /mɪskɔːl/ (UK).
What is the past tense of miscall?
The past tense of miscall is miscalled.

Words near miscall in the dictionary

  1. miscalibrated
  2. miscalibrates
  3. miscalibrating
  4. miscalibration
  5. miscalibrations
  6. miscall
  7. miscalled
  8. miscaller
  9. miscallers
  10. miscalling
  11. miscalls

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: miscall (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-miscall.wav.

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