Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An error or fault resulting from defective judgment, deficient knowledge, or carelessness.
  • noun A misconception or misunderstanding.
  • intransitive verb To understand wrongly; misinterpret.
  • intransitive verb To recognize or identify incorrectly.
  • intransitive verb To make a mistake; err.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • l. To take wrongly; appropriate erroneously or through misapprehension.
  • To take or choose erroneously; choose amiss, as between alternatives; regard (something) as other than it is: as, to mistake one's road or bearings; to mistake a fixed star for a planet.
  • To take in a wrong sense; conceive or understand erroneously; misunderstand; misjudge: as, to mistake one's meaning or intentions.
  • To make a mistake; be in error; be wrong; misapprehend.
  • To take a wrong part; transgress.
  • To err in advice, opinion, or judgment; be under a misapprehension or misconception; be unintentionally in error.
  • noun An error in action, opinion, or judgment; especially, misconception, misapprehension, or misunderstanding; an erroneous view, act, or omission, arising from ignorance, confusion, misplaced confidence, etc.; a slip; a fault; an error; a blunder.
  • noun In law, an erroneous mental conception that influences the will and leads to action. Pomeroy.
  • noun Synonyms Error, Bull, etc. See blunder.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To err in knowledge, perception, opinion, or judgment; to commit an unintentional error.
  • transitive verb Obs. or R. To take or choose wrongly.
  • transitive verb To take in a wrong sense; to misunderstand misapprehend, or misconceive
  • transitive verb To substitute in thought or perception.
  • transitive verb To have a wrong idea of in respect of character, qualities, etc.; to misjudge.
  • noun An apprehending wrongly; a misconception; a misunderstanding; a fault in opinion or judgment; an unintentional error of conduct.
  • noun (Law) Misconception, error, which when non-negligent may be ground for rescinding a contract, or for refusing to perform it.
  • noun [Low] surely; without fail.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An error; a blunder.
  • noun baseball A pitch which was intended to be pitched in a hard to hit location, but instead ends up in an easy to hit place
  • verb transitive To understand wrongly, taking one thing for another, or someone for someone else.
  • verb transitive To make an error, to do something in a wrong way.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an understanding of something that is not correct
  • noun a wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention
  • noun part of a statement that is not correct
  • verb identify incorrectly
  • verb to make a mistake or be incorrect

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Middle English mistaken, to misunderstand, from Old Norse mistaka, to take in error : mis-, wrongly; see mei- in Indo-European roots + taka, to take.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Middle English, from Old Norse mistaka ("to take in error, to miscarry")

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