Word.ws English Dictionary

mislook

/mɪsˈlʊk/

mislook verb: to sin by looking.

Verb

mislook (third-person singular simple present mislooks, present participle mislooking, simple past and past participle mislooked)

  1. (intransitive) To sin by looking.
  2. (transitive) To look unfavorably on.
  3. (transitive) To miss in searching; mislay or lose temporarily; neglectively overlook.
    • “We shared that with the FBI,” said Robert Delfin, Chief of Intelligence command for the Philippine National Police. “They may have mislooked and didn't appreciate the info coming from the Philippine police.2005, James Bamford, A Pretext For War
  4. (transitive) To look incorrectly or amiss.
    • To look for "organic form" or for active conflict ultimately resolved, "all passion spent," is to mislook.1977, Israeli Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Makhon ha-Yiśreʼeli le-poʼeṭiḳah ṿe-semyoṭiḳah ʻal-shem Porṭer, PTL.

Noun

mislook (uncountable)

  1. (rare) Sinful looking.
    • The story of Perseus and Medusa contains a suggestion of how to overcome the evils of "Mislook" in that Perseus is victorious through his use of the shield of Pallas and the sword of Mercury.1975, Patrick J. Gallacher, Love, the word, and Mercury: A Reading of John Gower's Confessio Amantis'

Forms of mislook

third-person singular presentmislooks
present participlemislooking
past participlemislooked
pastmislooked

Origin of mislook

From Middle English misloken, equivalent to mis- + look.

From Middle English mislok, mysloke, equivalent to mis- + look.

Questions about mislook

What does mislook mean?
Mislook means to sin by looking.
What part of speech is mislook?
Mislook can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce mislook?
Mislook is pronounced /mɪsˈlʊk/.
What is the past tense of mislook?
The past tense of mislook is mislooked.

Words near mislook in the dictionary

  1. mislodging
  2. mislog
  3. mislogged
  4. mislogging
  5. mislogs
  6. mislook
  7. mislooked
  8. mislooking
  9. mislooks
  10. mislore
  11. mislove

Source and license

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