mispraise
mispraise verb: to praise falsely, injudiciously, or without good reason.
Verb
mispraise (third-person singular simple present mispraises, present participle mispraising, simple past and past participle mispraised)
- To praise falsely, injudiciously, or without good reason.
- [T]hough I spend my nights, and dayes, and thoughts, and spirits, and words, and preaching, and writing, upon Princes, and Judges, and Magistrates . . . I have not paid a farthing of my debt to God; I have not praised him, but I have praised them, till not only my selfe, but even they, whom I have...1623, John Donne, The sermons of John Donne, Sermon 12 (Google preview)
- We look upon it not so much as a strangely overpraised, but as a mispraised composition. It is a torrent of abuse.1845, Morgan Rattler, "Touching Antony the Triumvir and Cicero the Orator," Fraser's Magazine (September), p. 326 (Google preview)
- To slander, blame, or disparage.
- On hearing the Duke of Wellington mispraised he defends him, in a sonnet.1949, Lionel Trilling, Matthew Arnold, →ISBN, page 106
Forms of mispraise
| third-person singular present | mispraises |
|---|---|
| present participle | mispraising |
| past participle | mispraised |
| past | mispraised |
Origin of mispraise
From mis- + praise. Compare to French mépriser.
Questions about mispraise
- What does mispraise mean?
- Mispraise means to praise falsely, injudiciously, or without good reason.
- What part of speech is mispraise?
- Mispraise is a verb.
- What is the past tense of mispraise?
- The past tense of mispraise is mispraised.
Words near mispraise in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mispraise (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: “mispraise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mispraise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.