mistalk
mistalk verb: to speak badly; to stutter, garble one's words, mispronounce words, substitute incorrect words, or make other such errors.
Verb
mistalk (third-person singular simple present mistalks, present participle mistalking, simple past and past participle mistalked)
- To speak badly; to stutter, garble one's words, mispronounce words, substitute incorrect words, or make other such errors.
- The dictater frequently misreads or mistalks a word. If the error is plain, and leaves no room for doubt that it is an error, don't copy that error.1904 October, Charles G. Mutzenbergh, “The Stenographer”, in The Phonographic Magazine and National Shorthand Reporter
- Freud merges the two communicative scenes in his writing : the restricted clinical one with its specificity of talking, mistalking, listening , mislistening, and the larger public one of writing and reading.1999, María Rosa Fort Brescia, Moisés Lemlij, At the threshold of the millennium, page 63
- Synonyms:
- misspeak
- To talk inappropriately, misleadingly, mistakenly, or otherwise untruely.
- But the only thing that he retained of this first study was a certain "breathlessness" which is not absent in Shelley, but which assumes quite different form in Browning, and which is in fact the right name for his much mistalked of "obscurity."1910, George Saintsbury, A History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day, page 218
- I don't aim to mistalk ye. I jest want to tell ye how it was.1937, Margaret Gardner Mayorga, editor, The Best One-act Plays of 1937, page 91
- Synonyms:
- misspeak
Noun
mistalk (usually uncountable, plural mistalks)
- The act or content of mistalking.
- What you type gets sent across the network immediately. That means your talkee sees exactly what you type, including mistakes and "mistalks," so think before you type!1995, Marshall Wilensky, Candace Leiden, TCP/IP for Dummies, page 97
- The noise came nearer the door and Mian Sahib saw the thrashing of the boy-servant whose crime was mistalk.2007, Shahid Nasim Hyder, Love, Jehad, and Terrorism, page 50
Examples of mistalk in a sentence
- What had come over their favorite storyteller to mistalk like that?2021, Maryse Condé, Crossing the Mangrove:
- For 11 months he's been mistalking about my record, misdirecting it, misstating it.1992 September 27, President George Bush, Remarks to the Community in Wixom, Michigan:
- And then also, those who out of their own self-righteousness or disappointments for those being processed start to misbehave or mistalk and even lose their faith because of this.2014, Max. Wellspring Oseogena, The Empowered Life!, page 178:
- I mistalked, I really did, they're not my kids.2021, Daai Readington, Teenage rebellion, page 117:
Synonyms of mistalk
Forms of mistalk
| Verb | |
|---|---|
| third-person singular present | mistalks |
| present participle | mistalking |
| past participle | mistalked |
| past | mistalked |
| Noun | |
| plural | mistalks |
Origin of mistalk
From mis- + talk.
Questions about mistalk
- What does mistalk mean?
- Mistalk means to speak badly; to stutter, garble one's words, mispronounce words, substitute incorrect words, or make other such errors.
- How do you use mistalk in a sentence?
- What had come over their favorite storyteller to mistalk like that?
- What part of speech is mistalk?
- Mistalk can be a verb or a noun.
- What is the past tense of mistalk?
- The past tense of mistalk is mistalked.
Words near mistalk in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: mistalk (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “mistalk.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mistalk. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.