Word.ws English Dictionary

misspray

misspray verb: to spray incorrectly.

Verb

misspray (third-person singular simple present missprays, present participle misspraying, simple past and past participle missprayed)

  1. To spray incorrectly.
    • Directionality in an aerosol overcap is a matter of degree. All of these units can be missprayed if one tries hard enough.1976, American Society for Testing and Materials, Child-resistant Packaging, page 27
    • To avoid misspraying, a pilot will check wind direction from the smoke of burning tires.1982, Geo - Volume 4, Issue 1, page 92

Noun

misspray (plural missprays)

  1. An instance of misspraying.
    • This is your last chance to prevent any impurities or clumps from entering spray gun passages and causing a clog or misspray.2009, Tharran E. Gaines, How to Paint Your Tractor, page 103
    • They worked in silence for about half an hour before removing the masking tape and scraping at the missprays.2010, Henry Porter, Brandenburg

Examples of misspray in a sentence

  • An impurity passed into your gun could cause it to misspray or clog, creating a lot of extra work fixing the paint surface and your spray gun.2003, Dennis W. Parks, How to Paint Your Car, page 111:
  • This allowed operators to quickly discover if their tanks were leaking or if a misspray occurred.2012, Kansas History - Volume 35, page 123:

Forms of misspray

Verb
third-person singular presentmissprays
present participlemisspraying
past participlemissprayed
pastmissprayed
Noun
pluralmissprays

Origin of misspray

From mis- + spray.

Questions about misspray

What does misspray mean?
Misspray means to spray incorrectly.
How do you use misspray in a sentence?
An impurity passed into your gun could cause it to misspray or clog, creating a lot of extra work fixing the paint surface and your spray gun.
What part of speech is misspray?
Misspray can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of misspray?
The past tense of misspray is missprayed.

Words near misspray in the dictionary

  1. misspools
  2. misspot
  3. misspots
  4. misspotted
  5. misspotting
  6. misspray
  7. missprayed
  8. misspraying
  9. missprays
  10. misspread
  11. misspreading

Source and license

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