Definitions

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

  • imp. & p. p. of mislead.

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

  • verb Simple past tense and past participle of mislead.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The customers' claim that the label misled them into buying the product meant they didn't get what they paid for, the court said.

    SFGate: Top News Stories begelko@sfchronicle.com (Bob Egelko 2011

  • Viewers being 'misled' is in their brief where it relates to advertising or news bulletins, but In matters of science it is invariably the case that there are a range of views on any number of issues ...

    OK to promote vegetables via nonsense? Ray Girvan 2005

  • Reading the opening paragraph and the title misled me to believe that I was going to learn something that I didn’t.

    How can you tell it isn't science? - The Panda's Thumb 2006

  • "The title misled me, for I'd never heard it before.

    Royal Flash Fraser, George MacDonald, 1925- 1970

  • I would think spending billions on war that was misled from the start is much worse Giuliani.

    Giuliani: Obama presidency 'much worse than I thought' 2009

  • Tiwari said the lights had not harmed any one so far except that if one followed them one could be misled from the road into the thorny jungles.

    Archive 2007-08-01 2007

  • If Dr Griffin misled the Board then we have a different "kettle of fish".

    Proposed School Budget Received Badly at cvillenews.com 2005

  • Let me ask those of you reading this letter: Were YOU "misled" -- or did you figure it out sometime between October of 2002 and March of 2007 that George W. Bush was up to something rotten?

    Who Do We Vote For This Time Around? A Letter from Michael Moore 2008

  • For that, and other reasons, White House aides say Bush -- who originally described Walker as a "poor fellow" who had been "misled" -- might ask for more information about Walker's conduct before he makes his decision.

    The White House Is Divided Over Walker 2007

  • But then it starts to go off course, “Those ’savages’ are only wild in the sense that we call fruits wild when they are produced by Nature in her ordinary course; whereas it is fruit which we have artificially perverted and misled from the common order which we ought to call savage.”

    Savage Fruit « So Many Books 2004

Comments

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  • Probably the most embarrassing of my childhood-teenage mispronunciations. For whatever reason, I first read this as "my-zeld". This, in turn, led to the back-formation of a present tense and infinitive, naturally this would be the verb "to misle" (which I imagined to be pronounced as "myzel", with stress on the first syllable).

    Of course this was too much for my family to resist - stifling their glee at my mistake, they immediately hopped on the bandwagon, adopting the non-existent "misle" as if it were a real word. So it took me years to figure out finally that I had indeed been misled, as the rest of the family secretly mocked my ignorance. I have no idea why the connection with the verb 'mislead' never occurred to me - it just never did.

    February 20, 2007

  • You know, I think I looked at this word the same way when first introduced to it--connecting the "misle" part somehow with "miserly." Made perfect sense to me at the time.

    Families...they're the reason mocking exists. ;-)

    February 20, 2007

  • Don't worry sionnach, I was reading the other day about a dog that had been un-derfed. I wasn't sure what that meant, but it sounded painful. Then I realized it was under-fed, whoops.

    February 20, 2007

  • I totally made this same mistake as a child. I blame the confusing English language! Isn't misled itself some kind of backformation (or frontformation?) of led? Lead/mislead, led/misled.

    July 17, 2007

  • oh-oh, I will never see this word the same way again. Every once in a while I look at a familiar word that is in the "wrong" context and I misread it. It is a bit scary.

    July 17, 2007

  • Yeah, I hear you.

    But sionnach, I also think this happens a lot when one is exceptionally well-read as a child because you see them before you hear them pronounced. I know I had several other instances of this but I am once again memfaulting on the examples.

    July 18, 2007

  • Yes! Exactly arby! Even today I find that I may not use the first word that comes to mind because I learned it in a book and I'm not 100% sure about the pronunciation. I mispronounced dawdle forever!

    July 18, 2007

  • Really? How did you pronounce it?

    Sometimes I end up liking the mispronunciation better than the correct one. :-)

    July 18, 2007

  • I thought of an example - and I am embarrassed to admit how old I was when I learned the "real" pronounciation - but I thought "aspartame" was pronounced "As-par-ta-MEY" instead of "AS-par-tame".

    July 19, 2007

  • I also had a bizarre tendency to insert extra letters in words, often duplicatively so - for example I thought mutilate was spelled "mutiliate", Herculean was "Herculanean" and mnemonic was "mnemnonic". Chalk it up to my learning disability! It's a lot easier to remember how they're pronounced once I figured out how to spell them correctly!

    July 19, 2007

  • dwa-dle. I still have to double-check it in my head.

    July 19, 2007

  • That's cute! Reminds me of one of my favorite words of all time, twaddle.

    *feels like Lewis Carroll making up nonsense rhymes*

    July 19, 2007

  • Arby, I know someone who still pronounces "aspartame" that way. I also know someone who pronounces crudite as CREW-dite. I think it's as you say--if you see the word in print before you hear it pronounced, the tendency is to stick with how you *think* it should be pronounced. It's hard to change, even once you find out it isn't quite correct.

    Jennarenn, I like dwa-dle better than the real thing. :-)

    July 19, 2007

  • I've been purposefully avoiding this conversation, but I thought fiery was pronounced "feery" until high school, when I got in a bit of a friendly dispute with a classmate about it. We finally settled by checking with the dictionary, which proved me shamefully wrong. I still think the word should be spelled firey, if it's going to be pronounced like that.

    July 19, 2007

  • I agree--but then whoever said English was logical? ;-)

    July 19, 2007

  • For me it was "oinks" aka onyx. My family prefers the pronounciation - for the hilarity.

    July 19, 2007

  • Haha! A classic, trivet!

    July 19, 2007

  • whoever said English was logical?

    TRUE DAT!

    July 19, 2007

  • See awry for a similar pronunciation debacle.

    April 7, 2008

  • Trivet: your onyx experience reminds me of my attempts to swot up on pop culture when I was about 11 or 12 (I thought having friends would be fun, and classical music nerd that I was, this was my strategy). True to form, I read a lot; I also listened to the right radio stations. But all this was done alone and not all the connections were made. Hence I came away concluding that there was a band called "In Excess" and another band called INXS (which I pronounced "inks"). Just how I managed to avoid wholesale humiliation, I don't know. Must have realised in the nick of time!

    April 7, 2008

  • Some mispronunciations from my benighted youth:

    HIGH-per-BOWL (for "hyperbole")

    WHY-zend (for "wizened")

    I also used to pronounce "donor" as "donner" and rhyme "caste" with "paste".

    April 7, 2008

  • Frindley, I remember making a similar mistake when I was little. My older cousin had an NOFX t-shirt that I spent hours puzzling over. I just couldn't figure out how to pronounce such a word.

    April 7, 2008

  • I still pronounce it HIGH-per-BOWL in my head.

    April 8, 2008

  • Wait--it isn't pronounced WHY-zend?!

    Mine was intravenous. It looked like ravenous, and for good reason. And it's very much a symptom of reading and not hearing stuff pronounced. I could come up with a huge list (if I thought about it long enough) of words, particularly names of people and places, that I "misheard" for eons.

    "Antietam" comes to mind...

    March 6, 2009

  • Wait, wasn't Antietam a character in The Whyzard of Odds?

    (I think wizened is standardly WIZZ-end.)

    March 6, 2009

  • I heard this word pronounced "missle-d" on NPR of all places, in a movie review. That experience has bothered me for longer than I care to reveal.

    July 22, 2009