mismaneuver

mismaneuver verb: to maneuver in a way that has an unfortunate result.

Verb

mismaneuver (third-person singular simple present mismaneuvers, present participle mismaneuvering, simple past and past participle mismaneuvered)

To maneuver in a way that has an unfortunate result.
- Maude Purvis was the granddaughter of an American Southern gentleman, Robert Louis Earle Purvis, who somehow mismaneuvered himself into association with the Yankees during the Civil War and quickly thereafter remaneuvered himself to distant Batavia where he found a happy and prosperous haven .1956, American Universities Field Staff, Fieldstaff Reports: Southeast Asia series - Volumes 4-6, page 6
- Mr. Frank prematurely ended his sad and spotty career in a Rocky Mountain ravine, smashed inside the stolen car he'd drunkenly mismaneuvered around a cliff curve.1971, Neal Cassady, The First Third, page 117

mismaneuver (countable and uncountable, plural mismaneuvers)

(countable) A maneuver that does not go as intended.
- The second is the probability of a mismaneuver in the face of an impending accident.1989, Per Bruun, Port Engineering, page 186
- Or the so-called foolproof airplane that is so control-limited and inherently stable that it obviously "wants" to fly and will work itself out of any stall, mismaneuver or spin anyone puts it into — in the process settling itself back on a comfortable and even keel?1999, Guy Murchie, The Seven Mysteries of Life, page 442
(uncountable) The act of mismaneuvering.
- Through political maneuver (or mismaneuver) the act, in its full civil rights thrust, was joined to outlaw both race and sex discrimination in its coverage, but only in its title in regards to employment.1977, Ohio State University. Commission on Women and Minorities, Report, page 16
- The frequency of a ship collision with a fixed object or a ship depends on the hypothetical frequency of ship collision with fixed autopilots and the probability of mismaneuver.1982 ·, IABSE Reports - Volume 42, page 91

Victory eludes me, I must have misjudged or mismaneuvered.1987, Jennifer Curtiss Gage, Dominique Rolin, The Deathday Cake, page 122:
The Fifth Queen is like Verdi's Otello: made of miscalculation, mismaneuver, and mistake.2003, Martha Tuck Rozett, Constructing a World: Shakespeare's England and the New Historical Fiction, page 9:

Verb
third-person singular present	mismaneuvers
present participle	mismaneuvering
past participle	mismaneuvered
past	mismaneuvered
alternative form	mismaneuvre
alternative form	mismanoeuver
alternative form	mismanoeuvre
Noun
plural	mismaneuvers

From mis- + maneuver.

What does mismaneuver mean?: Mismaneuver means to maneuver in a way that has an unfortunate result.
How do you use mismaneuver in a sentence?: Victory eludes me, I must have misjudged or mismaneuvered.
What part of speech is mismaneuver?: Mismaneuver can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of mismaneuver?: The past tense of mismaneuver is mismaneuvered.

Adapted from Wiktionary: mismaneuver (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: 2026-09-02

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