Word.ws English Dictionary

mispitch

mispitch verb: to sing or play one or more notes at the wrong pitch.

Verb

mispitch (third-person singular simple present mispitches, present participle mispitching, simple past and past participle mispitched)

  1. To sing or play one or more notes at the wrong pitch.
    • It is so easy for over-anxious singers to squeak, to mispitch a note, or to forget the words, that the teacher must display absolute faith in his or her pupils' ability to produce something of value.1995, T. M. Perry, Music Lessons for Children with Special Needs, page 64
    • My first attempt goes none too well: I sing the wrong mnemonic (though right pitch) in line two and mispitch the leap between lines four and five.2004, Eric Clarke, Nicholas Cook, Empirical Musicology, page 24
  2. To give the wrong angle or pitch to.
    • Such an approach, if successful, will maximize rotor energy capture in spite of poorly understood rotor performance, icing, mispitched blades, etc.2010, James F. Manwell, Jon G. McGowan, Anthony L. Rogers, Wind Energy Explained: Theory, Design and Application, page 396
  3. To do a poor job of promoting or selling someone or something, or to attemp such promotion at the wrong place or time.
    • Fines [Receipts] Received for the city's part of persons breaking and disobeying customs, ordinances and laudable acts ordained for the commonwealth of the city, and for fines taken of persons committing offences within the market of the city by way of forestalling and regrating, and for wares...1984, City of London (England). Records Office, Corporation of London Records Office, Betty R. Masters, Chamber Accounts of the Sixteenth Century, page 5
    • In the world of inflated telecoms takeovers at that time, it was not inconceivable that a deflated Vodafone share price could follow a mispitched bid and that Vodafone itself could become of interest to other parties.2003, Trevor Merriden, Rollercoaster: The Turbulent Life and Times of Vodafone and Chris Gent, page 63
  4. To set up a tent or camp badly (poor construction, bad location, etc.)
    • Nearly as bad as the air overnight in these European nineteenth-century tents, which sicken our best armies, was the vile smell in which I found one evening our camp mispitched after eleven hours' ride.1880, B. Solymos, Desert Life: Recollections of an Expedition in the Soudan, page 82
  5. To discard incorrectly.
    • I see , he's playing off the trumps hoping someone will mispitch ... aha , look ! East has discarded a small heart1995, David Silver, Tales Out of School, page 116
  6. To throw badly.
    • At the plate the catcher is responsible for catching pitches, keeping mispitched balls in front of the plate, calling pitches that are normally done through hand signals, picking off runners, and they are considered the leaders of the field.2021, University of the District of Columbia, “The plate umpire may suspend play because of darkness”, in Course Hero

Noun

mispitch (countable and uncountable, plural mispitches)

  1. The act or process of mispitching (any sense).
    • The solo Cornet here was spoiled by mispitch and there was a little ragged playing in 3rd and wth bars before No. 19.1955, Canadian Bandmaster, page 40
    • We have a high incidence of mispitches by the USPS which further adds to the delay.1976, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Post Office and Civil Service., Military Mail: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Postal Facilities, Mail, and Labor Management, page 41

Examples of mispitch in a sentence

  • The first two solos on record are probably by Pee Wee Erwin; the third, by Bunny Berigan, starts off strongly, but he appears to mispitch and end up on the wrong harmonic.2012, Catherine Tackley, Benny Goodman's Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert, page 73:
  • Ideally, you purposefully mispitch a low note that is full of harmonics and use a powerful articulation to provoke harmonics to sound.2016, Kim Walker, Spirited Wind Playing: The Performance Dimension, page 230:
  • "Oh bloody hell..." Sandi began quietly, seeming to think she'd mispitched it and rushed it.2017, Lyn Dowland, Winder Path:

Forms of mispitch

Verb
third-person singular presentmispitches
present participlemispitching
past participlemispitched
pastmispitched
Noun
pluralmispitches

Origin of mispitch

From mis- + pitch.

Questions about mispitch

What does mispitch mean?
Mispitch means to sing or play one or more notes at the wrong pitch.
How do you use mispitch in a sentence?
The first two solos on record are probably by Pee Wee Erwin; the third, by Bunny Berigan, starts off strongly, but he appears to mispitch and end up on the wrong harmonic.
What part of speech is mispitch?
Mispitch can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of mispitch?
The past tense of mispitch is mispitched.

Words near mispitch in the dictionary

  1. mispiling
  2. mispin
  3. mispinned
  4. mispinning
  5. mispins
  6. mispitch
  7. mispitched
  8. mispitches
  9. mispitching
  10. misplace
  11. misplaceable

Source and license

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