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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

mistake.

To understand wrongly, taking one thing or person for another.

7 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/mɪˈsteɪk/[mɪˈsteɪk]Received-Pronunciation, US[mɪˈstɛjk]British, Southern, Standard[mɪˈsteːk]Canada

  1. To understand wrongly, taking one thing or person for another.

    transitive
    Sorry, I mistook you for my brother. You look very similar.
    Don't mistake my kindness for weakness.

  2. To misunderstand (someone).

    obsolete · transitive

  3. To commit an unintentional error; to do or think something wrong.

    intransitive · obsolete

  4. To take or choose wrongly.

    obsolete · rare
Where this word comes from

From Middle English mistaken, from Old Norse mistaka (“to take in error, to miscarry”); equivalent to mis- + take. Cognate with Icelandic mistaka (“to mistake”), Swedish missta (“to mistake”) (before apocope misstaga). The noun, which replaced earlier mistaking, is derived from the verb. Compare Swedish misstag (“mistake”, noun), Faroese mistak (“mitake”, noun), Icelandic mistak (“mistake”, noun).

noun/mɪˈsteɪk/[mɪˈsteɪk]Received-Pronunciation, US[mɪˈstɛjk]British, Southern, Standard[mɪˈsteːk]Canada

  1. An error.

    There were too many mistakes in the test that, unfortunately, made you fail.
    He always made mistakes on purpose.

  2. A pitch which was intended to be pitched in a hard-to-hit location, but instead ends up in an easy-to-hit place.

Where this word comes from

From Middle English mistaken, from Old Norse mistaka (“to take in error, to miscarry”); equivalent to mis- + take. Cognate with Icelandic mistaka (“to mistake”), Swedish missta (“to mistake”) (before apocope misstaga). The noun, which replaced earlier mistaking, is derived from the verb. Compare Swedish misstag (“mistake”, noun), Faroese mistak (“mitake”, noun), Icelandic mistak (“mistake”, noun).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.