Word.ws English Dictionary

misfall

/mɪsˈfɔːl/

misfall verb: to befall badly or incorrectly; happen unfortunately (to); mishappen; turn out badly.

Verb

misfall (third-person singular simple present misfalls, present participle misfalling, simple past misfell, past participle misfallen)

  1. (ambitransitive) To befall badly or incorrectly; happen unfortunately (to); mishappen; turn out badly.
    • Sometime ſhe feared, leaſt ſome hard miſhap / Had him misfalne in his aduenturous queſt; [...]1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], part II (books IV–VI), London: […] [Richard Field] for William Ponsonby, →OCLC, stanza 4, page 257
    • [...] let us abide together that, one with the counsel and that other with the deed, then may there nothing misfall to usward.1889, Henry Morley, Early prose romances

Noun

misfall (plural misfalls)

  1. A mishap; accident; bad luck; misfortune.
    • But alas! an unlooked- for misfall has occurred."1875, Julian Hawthorne, Saxon studies

Forms of misfall

Verb
third-person singular presentmisfalls
present participlemisfalling
pastmisfell
past participlemisfallen
Noun
pluralmisfalls

Origin of misfall

From Middle English misfallen, equivalent to mis- + fall. Cognate with Dutch misvallen (“to misfall, miss in falling, displease, miscarry”), German missfallen (“to displease”), Icelandic misfalla (“to misuse”).

Questions about misfall

What does misfall mean?
Misfall means to befall badly or incorrectly; happen unfortunately (to); mishappen; turn out badly.
What part of speech is misfall?
Misfall can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce misfall?
Misfall is pronounced /mɪsˈfɔːl/.
What is the past tense of misfall?
The past tense of misfall is misfell.

Words near misfall in the dictionary

  1. misfactoring
  2. misfactors
  3. misfacts
  4. misfaith
  5. misfaiths
  6. misfall
  7. misfallen
  8. misfalling
  9. misfalls
  10. misfalne
  11. misfare

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: misfall (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-misfall.wav.

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