misweigh

misweigh verb: to give an inaccurate measurement of the weight (of something).

Verb

misweigh (third-person singular simple present misweighs, present participle misweighing, simple past and past participle misweighed)

To give an inaccurate measurement of the weight (of something).
- An honest butcher, for instance, might sue if his picture were used with an article about butchers who misweigh meat.1973, Bill Severn, The Right to Privacy, page 27
- How can you misweigh with that kind of equipment?1975, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. Subcommittee on Foreign Agricultural Policy, Grain Inspection, page 66
To treat (something) as having a level of importance different from its actual importance.
- And you misweigh the situation.2002, R.A. Salvatore, Ascendance, page 75
- This psychological tendency to misweigh what is easily recalled is a major reason why people are attracted to lotteries despite the dismal odds of winning, as they have seen other ordinary people win a lottery on the news.2015, Tren Griffin, Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor, page 80

misweigh (plural misweighs)

An instance of misweighing (giving an inaccurate measurement of weight)
- If there is a misweigh or misfigure, the Dye Superintendent needs to know who was responsible.1978, AATCC, Book of Papers, page 142
- Discrepancies in the gloss level of the batch sample could be caused by a misweigh of one or more of the ink components or, on the continuous type of mills, it could be due to an incorrect mill setting or condition.1993, Robert H. Leach, The Printing Ink Manual, page 831831

Violations—Bribery of inspectors to falsely grade or misweigh grain, to alter or counterfeit official inspection certificates, or to falsely represent that an official grain inspection has been made.1984, Law Enforcement Responsibilities: Office of Inspector General:
In February 1942, Nina Kobyzeva complained that civilians did not receive full rations for obvious reasons: "Clerks are finagling people like beasts, they misweigh [food].2021, Jeffrey K. Hass, Wartime Suffering and Survival, page 58:
A big part of this human underperformance is our tendency to misweigh the importance of one variable versus another.2021, Daniel Crosby, The Laws of Wealth:
If the furnace settings are correct, this condition would indicate a misweigh, usually meaning the silica was probably left out of the mill.2009, Steve Kilczewski, 66th Porcelain Enamel Institute Technical Forum, page 73:

Verb
third-person singular present	misweighs
present participle	misweighing
past participle	misweighed
past	misweighed
Noun
plural	misweighs

From mis- + weigh.

What does misweigh mean?: Misweigh means to give an inaccurate measurement of the weight (of something).
How do you use misweigh in a sentence?: Violations—Bribery of inspectors to falsely grade or misweigh grain, to alter or counterfeit official inspection certificates, or to falsely represent that an official grain inspection has been made.
What part of speech is misweigh?: Misweigh can be a verb or a noun.
What is the past tense of misweigh?: The past tense of misweigh is misweighed.

Adapted from Wiktionary: misweigh (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: 2026-09-02

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