Word.ws English Dictionary

misfire

/ˈmɪs.faɪ(ɹ)/US/ˈmɪs.faɪ.ɚ/

misfire noun: an act of misfiring.

Noun

misfire (plural misfires)

  1. An act of misfiring.
  2. (figuratively) A failure.
    • The fact is, Mr Carrados, Gertrude is a misfire. It was the surprise of her life (if I said "disappointment" you'd think me catty) when Mark married me, and she didn't set out to be pleasant to the interloper.1927, Ernest Bramah [pseudonym; Ernest Brammah Smith], Max Carrados Mysteries
    • Amazon’s misfires with Alexa may have led Google astray, said a former manager who worked on Google Assistant.2023 March 15, Brian X. Chen, Nico Grant, Karen Weise, “How Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant Lost the A.I. Race”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

Verb

misfire (third-person singular simple present misfires, present participle misfiring, simple past and past participle misfired)

  1. To fail to discharge properly.
  2. To fail to ignite in the proper sequence.
  3. To initiate an action potential without the proper stimulus.
  4. (broadly) To fail to achieve the anticipated result.
    • His practical joke misfired and he nearly burnt my left hand.

misfire meaning in Tamil, Malayalam and Kannada

misfire in Tamil

இயக்கத்தவறு, விசைத்தவறு

misfire in Malayalam

വെടിപൊട്ടാതിരിക്കുക, ഉന്നം തെറ്റുക, ശരിക്ക് പ്രവർത്തിക്കാതിരിക്കുക

misfire in Kannada

ವಿಫಲವಾಗು, ಆಗದಿರು, ಗುರಿತಪ್ಪು, ಕಾರ್ಯಪ್ರಾರಂಭವಾಗದಿರು, ಸಿಡಿಯದಿರು, ಹಾರದೆ ಹೋಗು

Forms of misfire

Noun
pluralmisfires
Verb
third-person singular presentmisfires
present participlemisfiring
past participlemisfired
pastmisfired

Origin of misfire

Either a univerbation of earlier miss fire, or the compound mis- + fire (or possibly a confluence of both).

Words formed from misfire

Words that rhyme with misfire

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about misfire

What does misfire mean?
Misfire means an act of misfiring.
What is misfire in Tamil?
Misfire in Tamil is இயக்கத்தவறு, விசைத்தவறு. See Misfire meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is misfire?
Misfire can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce misfire?
Misfire is pronounced /ˈmɪs.faɪ(ɹ)/.
What is the plural of misfire?
The plural of misfire is misfires.

Words near misfire in the dictionary

  1. misfilters
  2. misfinger
  3. misfingered
  4. misfingering
  5. misfingers
  6. misfire
  7. misfired
  8. misfirer
  9. misfirers
  10. misfires
  11. misfiring

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: misfire (page history and authors); misfire (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); misfire (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); misfire (Kannada Wiktionary) (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)-Vealhurl-misfire.wav.

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