misread
An instance of reading wrongly.
Noun
- An instance of reading wrongly.
- Line fluctuations can cause misreads and miswrites. - 1983, Lawrence Calmus, The business guide to small computers, page 143:
- To bait the mark, the veteran grifter initially covers one of the three numbers on the clothespin or miscounts the marble tally which serves to award the mark fairbanked points. The grateful mark will not question the...
Origin
From Middle English misreden, from Old English misrǣdan (“to advise wrongly; read wrongly”), equivalent to mis- + read. Cognate with Saterland Frisian misräide (“to go wrong, fail”), Dutch misraden (“to guess wrongly”), German missraten (“to fail; go wrong; become wayward”). For the noun, compare Old English misrǣd (“misguidance; misconduct”).
Forms
Verb
- To read wrongly; misconstrue; misinterpret; mistake the sense or significance of.
- In the circumstances the Inspecting Officer concludes that the electric train motorman, despite his assertions to the contrary, misread the up main relief inner home signal for his own and ran past the up main through...
- Now I'm in / over my head, with something I said. / Completely misread I'm better off dead. - 2002, “Over My Head (Better Off Dead)”, in Does This Look Infected? (CD), performed by Sum 41, Island Records, via YouTube,...
- Yet her obsession with remaining inscrutable has the curious effect of making her also unable to read others—for example, she misses entirely the subversive humor of the black garage mechanic, Jimmy, with whom she deals...