Definitions

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

  • transitive verb To understand incorrectly; misinterpret.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To understand amiss; attach a false meaning to; take in a wrong sense; misconceive; interpret or explain to one's self erroneously.
  • To fail to understand (a person with reference to his words or actions): as, I misunderstood you.

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

  • transitive verb To misconceive; to mistake; to miscomprehend; to take in a wrong sense.

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

  • verb To understand incorrectly, while thinking to have understood correctly.

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

  • verb interpret in the wrong way

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

mis- +‎ understand

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word misunderstand.

Examples

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.