Word.ws English Dictionary

miss

/mɪs//mɪs/

miss verb: to fail to hit, catch, grasp, etc. Also the alternative spelling of Miss when used as a term of address or title of respect.

Verb

miss (third-person singular simple present misses, present participle missing, simple past and past participle missed)

  1. (ambitransitive, physical) To fail to hit, catch, grasp, etc.
    • I fired the gun, but the bullet missed the target.
    • I tried to kick the ball, but missed.
  2. (ambitransitive, physical) To avoid hitting.
    • The driver swerved and just managed to miss the chicken crossing the road.
  3. (transitive) To fail to achieve or attain.
    • The company missed all its sales targets.
    • When a man misses his great end, happiness, he will acknowledge he judged not right.1689 (indicated as 1690), [John Locke], An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding. […], London: […] Eliz[abeth] Holt, for Thomas Basset, […], →OCLC
  4. (transitive) To fail to experience, attend, partake, take advantage of, etc.
    • Joe missed the meeting this morning.
    • I usually watch the Oscars Ceremonies, but I missed it this year.
  5. (transitive) To avoid or escape.
    • The car just missed hitting a passer-by.
    • We missed disaster by the skin of our teeth.
  6. (transitive) To become aware of the loss or absence of; to feel the want or need of, sometimes with regret; to feel sadness at the absence of somebody or something.
    • I miss you! Come home soon!
    • I miss going for walks along the beach.
  7. (transitive) To fail to understand.
    • to miss the joke
    Antonyms:
    catch
  8. (transitive) To fail to notice; to have a shortcoming of perception; overlook.
    • So I'm just going over my early notes, see if I missed anything.
  9. (transitive) To be too late to connect with or meet something or someone (a means of transportation, a deadline, etc.).
    • I missed the plane!
    • "Is Polly still here?" — "No, sorry, you've just missed her. She left a couple of minutes ago."
  10. (transitive, mostly continuous tenses) To be wanting; to lack something that should be present (see also adjectival missing).
    • The car is missing essential features.
    • This jigsaw is missing several pieces.
  11. (slang, transitive, African-American Vernacular) To spare someone of something unwanted or undesirable.
    • Miss me with that nonsense!
  12. To fail to help the hand of a player.
    • Player A: J7. Player B: Q6. Table: 283. The flop missed both players!
Show 3 more meaningsShow fewer meanings
  1. To fail to score (a goal).
    • Georgia, ranked 16th in the world, dominated the breakdown before half-time and forced England into a host of infringements, but fly-half Merab Kvirikashvili missed three penalties.2011 September 18, Ben Dirs, “Rugby World Cup 2011: England 41-10 Georgia”, in BBC Sport
  2. (intransitive, obsolete) To go wrong; to err.
    • Emongst the Angels, a whole legione / Of wicked Sprights did fall from happy blis; / What wonder then, if one of women all did mis?1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto IX”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 2
  3. (intransitive, obsolete) To be absent, deficient, or wanting.
    • What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.c. 1591–1595 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Romeo and Ivliet”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...

Noun (1)

miss (plural misses)

  1. A failure to physically hit.
    • In eight shots at the target he had six misses.
    • "I ran from one place to another, and as it was not difficult to get a shot at him, I fired several times, but only made miss after miss."1886, Peter Christen Asbjø￵rnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 76
  2. A failure to obtain or accomplish something; a failure to succeed.
    • After four top-ten singles, the band's next release was a miss.
    • Your answer isn't exactly right, but it's a very close miss.
  3. An act of avoidance (usually used with the verb give).
    • I think I’ll give the meeting a miss.
  4. (informal) Someone or something whose loss or absence is felt.
    • Top striker Smith is out injured and will be a big miss for United.
  5. The situation where an item is not found in a cache and therefore needs to be explicitly loaded.
    • Already we're seeing fewer cache misses by avoiding creating cache entries for the idle task and expect to see even fewer with changes to the TLB reload code to uncache the page tables.1999, Proceedings of the Third Symposium on Operating Systems
  6. A foul shot that fails to hit the target ball, where the player has, in the referee's judgement, not made every effort to play a legal shot; in addition to conceding points for the foul, the player can be made to play the shot again.
  7. (obsolete) Error, fault; misdeed, wrongdoing, sin.
  8. (obsolete) Hurt or harm from a mistake or accident.
  9. (obsolete) Loss, lack want; hence, the feeling of loss.

Noun (2)

miss (countable and uncountable, plural misses)

  1. An unmarried woman; a girl.
    • While thus the fiends, with wily art, Adroitly stole upon the heart, And with their complaisance, and tales, Had ruind more than half the males, Gay Vanity, with smiles, and kisses, Was busy 'mongst the maids, and misses.1771, James Cawthorn, Poems, by the Rev. Mr. Cawthorn, Late Master of Tunbridge School
  2. A kept woman; a mistress.
    • courting a Miss1664, J[ohn] E[velyn], Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesties Dominions. […], London: […] Jo[hn] Martyn, and Ja[mes] Allestry, printers to the Royal...
  3. In the game of three-card loo, an extra hand, dealt on the table, which may be substituted for the hand dealt to a player.

Noun (3) capitalized: Miss

Miss (plural Misses or Mlles)

  1. A form of address, now used chiefly for an unmarried woman; used chiefly of girls before the mid-1700s, and thereafter used also of adult women without regard to marital status.
    • Mrs. Gardiner would be happy to see Miss March and Miss Josephine at a little dance on New-Year's-Eve.1869, Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
    1. With a surname.
      • These are the two young ladies that I wanted you to meet, Miss Jones and Miss Robinson.
    2. With a full name.
      • The victim was named as Miss Jane Doe.
    3. (dated, regional) With a first name only.
      • Excuse me Ma'am, will Miss Julia and Miss Emily be staying for tea?
      • She was so mad she wouldn't speak to me for quite a spell, but at last I coaxed her into going up to Miss Emmeline's room and fetching down a tintype of the missing Deacon man.1913, Joseph C[rosby] Lincoln, chapter VI, in Mr. Pratt’s Patients, New York, N.Y.; London: D[aniel] Appleton and Company, →OCLC
    4. (dated) Used alone.
      • Good morning, Miss. May I help you?
  2. A form of address for a female teacher or a waitress.
    • Excuse me, Miss, Donny's been pinching my pencils again.
  3. Used in title of the (female) winner of a beauty contest, or certain other types of contest, prefixing the country or other region that she represents, or the category of contest.
    • Ladies and gentlemen, please give a round of applause to our lovely new Miss Yorkshire!
    • And I can now announce that this year's Miss Personality is ... Doris Miggins!
  4. (derogatory, often, sarcastic) Used in a mock title to point out some quality, or alleged quality, of a girl or woman.
    • Don't ask me, ask Miss know-it-all over there.

Noun (4) capitalized: MISS

MISS (uncountable)

  1. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of medium intensity steady state.
  2. (abbreviation, initialism) Initialism of microbially induced sedimentary structure.

Proper noun capitalized: MISS

MISS

  1. Mississippi, as used in case citations.

Also used as

miss is also the alternative spelling of Miss when used as a term of address or title of respect.

miss meaning in Hindi, Bengali, Malayalam and Gujarati

miss in Hindi

चूक जाना

miss in Bengali

মিস করা, মিস করতে

miss in Malayalam

മിസ്സ് ചെയ്യാൻ

miss in Gujarati

ચૂકી જવું, ચૂકી જવા
More languagesFewer languages
miss in Odia
ମିସ୍ କରିବା
miss in Nepali
चुकाउनु cukāunu, अभाव महसुस गर्नु abhāv mahasus garnu, चुक cuk
miss in Tagalog
binibini
miss in Arabic
أَخْطَأَ ʔaḵṭaʔa, فَاتَ fāta, اِفْتَقَدَ iftaqada, اِشْتَاقَ ištāqa
miss in Malay
merindui
miss in Indonesian
merindukan, nona
miss in Thai
พลาด plâat, คิดถึง kít-tʉ̌ng, นางสาว naang-sǎao
miss in Vietnamese
trễ, trật, trượt, hụt

Examples of miss in a sentence

  • She tried to grab hold of the end of the rope, but she missed.
  • I'm starving! I missed breakfast this morning.
  • I only left the queue for a moment and now I've missed my turn.
  • This offer is too good to miss.
  • to miss an opportunity, to miss a chance
  • I'm not going to the party, but I don't think I'll be missed.

All 40 example sentences with miss

Antonyms of miss

Forms of miss

Verb
third-person singular presentmisses
present participlemissing
past participlemissed
pastmissed
Noun
pluralmisses
alternative formMiss
pluralMisses
pluralMlles
alternative pronunciation-spelling (archaic)meess
alternative pronunciation-spelling (archaic)Meess

Past tense of miss: missed

Plural of miss: misses

Origin of miss

Verb from Middle English missen, from Old English missan (“to miss, escape the notice of a person”), from Proto-West Germanic *missijan, from Proto-Germanic *missijaną (“to miss, go wrong, fail”), from Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- (“to change, exchange, trade”). Cognate with West Frisian misse (“to miss”), Dutch missen (“to miss”), German missen (“to miss”), Norwegian Bokmål and Danish miste (“to lose”), Swedish missa (“to miss”), Norwegian Nynorsk, Icelandic missa (“to lose”) and Latin mittere (“to send, let go”). Noun from Middle English misse, mis, from Old English miss (“loss, absence”), from Proto-West Germanic *miss, from Proto-Germanic *miss- (“loss”). Cognate with Scots miss (“a loss, want, cause of grief or mourning”), Middle High German misse, mis (“lack, missing, absence”), Icelandic missir (“loss”). Related also to Scots mis (“wrongdoing, sin, guilt”), Dutch mis (“misdeed, wrongdoing, mistake”), Middle Low German misse (“sin, wrong”).

From mistress.

Words formed from miss

Phrases with miss

18 more phrasesFewer phrases

Words that rhyme with miss

22 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about miss

What does miss mean?
Miss means to fail to hit, catch, grasp, etc.
What is miss in Hindi?
Miss in Hindi is चूक जाना. See Miss meaning in Hindi.
How do you use miss in a sentence?
She tried to grab hold of the end of the rope, but she missed.
What part of speech is miss?
Miss can be a verb, a noun or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce miss?
Miss is pronounced /mɪs/ (UK).
What is the past tense of miss?
The past tense of miss is missed.

Words near miss in the dictionary

  1. misruly
  2. misrun
  3. misrung
  4. misrunning
  5. misruns
  6. miss
  7. Miss 'Rona
  8. miss a beat
  9. miss a cog
  10. miss a trick
  11. Miss Ann

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: miss (page history and authors); Miss (page history and authors); MISS (page history and authors); miss (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); miss (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); miss (Malayalam, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); miss (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); miss (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-miss.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-miss.wav.

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