Word.ws English Dictionary

misust

misust is the simple past and past participle of misuse.

Meaning of misuse

Verb

misuse (third-person singular simple present misuses, present participle misusing, simple past and past participle misused or (obsolete) misust)

  1. (transitive) To use (something) incorrectly.
  2. (transitive) To abuse or mistreat (something or someone).
  3. (transitive) To rape (a woman); later more generally, to sexually abuse (someone).
    • “If that is true she would be the first case I have ever heard of, as most female captives are misused by the entire tribe.”2013, Philipp Meyer, The Son, Simon & Schuster, published 2014, page 326
  4. (obsolete, transitive) To abuse verbally, to insult.
    • Socrates was brought upon the stage by Aristophanes, and misused to his face: but he laughed, as if it concerned him not […].1624, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], The Anatomy of Melancholy: […], 2nd edition, Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and James Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition II...

See all 5 meanings of misuse

Questions about misust

What is misust the simple past and past participle of?
Misust is the simple past and past participle of misuse.

Words near misust in the dictionary

  1. misusers
  2. misuses
  3. misusest
  4. misuseth
  5. misusing
  6. misust
  7. misutilise
  8. misutilised
  9. misutilises
  10. misutilising
  11. misutilization

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: misust (page history and authors); misuse (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: “misust.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/misust. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.