Word.ws English Dictionary

misspeed

misspeed verb: to fail in an attempt to speed something along.

Verb

misspeed (third-person singular simple present misspeeds, present participle misspeeding, simple past and past participle missped)

  1. To fail in an attempt to speed something along.
    • Is there anything in which the nurse has failed? the hostess come short? the huntress missped? the pretty waiter-girl blundered?1874, Julie P. Smith, Ten Old Maids: And Five of Them Were Wise, and Five of Them Were Foolish, page 369
    • I think a majority of collisions on the water arise from an officer, as the common thing is, misspeeding himself, or giving an order to port when he means to say starboard, or from a man at the helm who has been there for some time with nothing to do specially suddenly getting an order and shoving...1908, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, Hearings, page 65

Forms of misspeed

third-person singular presentmisspeeds
present participlemisspeeding
past participlemissped
pastmissped

Origin of misspeed

From mis- + speed.

Questions about misspeed

What does misspeed mean?
Misspeed means to fail in an attempt to speed something along.
What part of speech is misspeed?
Misspeed is a verb.
What is the past tense of misspeed?
The past tense of misspeed is missped.

Words near misspeed in the dictionary

  1. misspeculating
  2. misspeculation
  3. misspeculations
  4. missped
  5. misspeech
  6. misspeed
  7. misspeeding
  8. misspeeds
  9. misspell
  10. misspellable
  11. misspelled

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: misspeed (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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