misgloss
/mɪsˈɡlɒs/
misgloss verb: to provide an incorrect translation or synopsis of.
Verb
misgloss (third-person singular simple present misglosses, present participle misglossing, simple past and past participle misglossed)
- To provide an incorrect translation or synopsis of
- Upis taught, Misunderstood, misgloss'd, the tale how brought Harmonia was to Cadmus — higher than Her mate in race, a dæmon, he mere man;1876, Alexander Crawford Lindsay Earl of Crawford, Argo: Or The Quest of the Golden Fleece, page 68
- But the definition is anachronistic and misglosses the citation it was presumably devised to explain.1981, Catherine Slater, Defeatists and Their Enemies, page 139
Noun
misgloss (plural misglosses)
- An incorrect translation or synopsis.
- Recently, this misgloss has led to an impossible interpretation of the Beowulf poet's allusion to "beornas on blancum" [warriors on white horses] (856a) and their racing on "fealwe mearwas" [fallow horses] (865b) in the episode of the Danes and Geats coming back from the mere.2003, Earl R. Anderson, Folk-taxonomies in Early English, page 152
- Starostin's sisi 'deer' is a misgloss, the word can refer to 'deer' as an 'animal for consumption' but does not necessary do so.2005, Martine Irma Robbeets, Is Japanese Related to Korean, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic?, page 100
Examples of misgloss in a sentence
- Both its traditional subject matter and the concision of its form have recommended it to this very day as a promise of "infinite riches in a little room” (=stanza) , to misgloss Marlowe's phrase.1992, Lowry Nelson, Poetic Configurations: Essays in Literary History and Criticism, page 41:
- It means 'white tip' and not 'white of the eye' as Krämer misglosses it.2002, Ward Hunt Goodenough, Under Heaven's Brow: Pre-Christian Religious Tradition in Chuuk, page 208:
- Here such cases as ghost words & misglosses, secondary semantics, different etymologies for one etymon or one etymology for different etyma, and finally semantic overpermissiveness are discussed.2006, Folia orientalia - Volumes 42-43, page 467:
Forms of misgloss
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | misglosses |
| present participle | misglossing |
| past participle | misglossed |
| past | misglossed |
| Noun | |
| plural | misglosses |
Origin of misgloss
From mis- + gloss.
Words that rhyme with misgloss
Questions about misgloss
- What does misgloss mean?
- Misgloss means to provide an incorrect translation or synopsis of.
- How do you use misgloss in a sentence?
- Both its traditional subject matter and the concision of its form have recommended it to this very day as a promise of "infinite riches in a little room” (=stanza) , to misgloss Marlowe's phrase.
- What part of speech is misgloss?
- Misgloss can be a verb or a noun.
- How do you pronounce misgloss?
- Misgloss is pronounced /mɪsˈɡlɒs/.
- What is the past tense of misgloss?
- The past tense of misgloss is misglossed.
Words near misgloss in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: misgloss (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: “misgloss.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/misgloss. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.