Word.ws English Dictionary

misdiscern

misdiscern verb: to discern incorrectly.

Verb

misdiscern (third-person singular simple present misdiscerns, present participle misdiscerning, simple past and past participle misdiscerned)

  1. To discern incorrectly.
    • Tartarin had neither the dazzled, misdiscerning vision of genius nor the fatuity that comes from a surfeit of wisdom.1892, Manchester Literary Club, Papers - Volume 18, page 379
    • But these, the statesman may be as apt to misdiscern as to overlook, failing in action through inadequacy in contemplation.1968, Arthur Lee Burns, Of Powers and Their Politics, page 281

Forms of misdiscern

third-person singular presentmisdiscerns
present participlemisdiscerning
past participlemisdiscerned
pastmisdiscerned

Origin of misdiscern

From mis- + discern.

Questions about misdiscern

What does misdiscern mean?
Misdiscern means to discern incorrectly.
What part of speech is misdiscern?
Misdiscern is a verb.
What is the past tense of misdiscern?
The past tense of misdiscern is misdiscerned.

Words near misdiscern in the dictionary

  1. misdirections
  2. misdirective
  3. misdirector
  4. misdirectors
  5. misdirects
  6. misdiscern
  7. misdiscerned
  8. misdiscerning
  9. misdiscerns
  10. misdiscover
  11. misdiscovered

Source and license

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