Word.ws English Dictionary

misgave

misgave is the simple past of misgive.

Meaning of misgive

Verb

misgive (third-person singular simple present misgives, present participle misgiving, simple past misgave, past participle misgiven)

  1. (archaic, transitive) Of the mind, heart, etc.: to give fear or doubt to; to make irresolute.
    • As Henry’s late presaging prophecy / Did glad my heart with hope of this young Richmond, / So doth my heart misgive me, in these conflicts / What may befall him, to his harm and ours:c. 1591–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard...
  2. (archaic, transitive) To suspect; to dread.
    • […] But for he had hir sought, / And coulde not finde hir any where, assuredly he thought / She did not liue aboue the molde, ne drewe the vitall breath: / Misgiuing worser in his minde, if ought be worse than death.1567, Ovid, “The First Booke”, in Arthur Golding, transl., The XV. Bookes of P. Ouidius Naso, Entytuled Metamorphosis, […], London: […] Willyam Seres […], →OCLC
  3. (archaic, transitive) To give wrongly; to give or grant amiss.
    • […] I protest unto you, I knew nothing of any of their Liberty misgiven or misused, till about a Fortnight since […]1700, William Laud, An Historical Account of All Material Transactions Relating to the University of Oxford in The history of the troubles and tryal of the Most Reverend Father in God and blessed...

Questions about misgave

What is misgave the simple past of?
Misgave is the simple past of misgive.

Words near misgave in the dictionary

  1. misgating
  2. misgauge
  3. misgauged
  4. misgauges
  5. misgauging
  6. misgave
  7. misgender
  8. misgendered
  9. misgenderer
  10. misgenderers
  11. misgendering

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: misgave (page history and authors); misgive (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: “misgave.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/misgave. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.