misle means A fine rain or thick mist; mizzle. It carries an Arena rating of 1551, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, misle ranks #723 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #1,472 of 17,127 for Most Vivid Words, #2,951 of 17,142 for Most Ingenious Words, #3,479 of 17,131 for Scariest Words.
misle is pronounced /ˈmɪzəɫ/.
Why “misle” is a great word
A fine rain or thick mist, or, nonstandardly, to mislead. Probably a blend of ‘mist’ and ‘drizzle’ for the weather sense, a lexical marriage from the 19th century. The nonstandard verb is a back-formation from the past participle ‘misled,’ an innocent error born of mistaken parsing. Unlike ‘drizzle,’ which implies distinct droplets, or ‘mist,’ which clings and hovers, ‘misle’ names a damp ambiguity between rain and fog, a slow seep of moisture that coats the skin. It is the grey veil that blurs a hillside, the chill film on a wool coat, the breath of a cloud descending to brush the moor. In its secondary life, it becomes a phantom verb, a word that means to be led astray by a word itself—the quiet poetry of a misapprehension.
Etymology
Probably a blend of mist + drizzle.
noun
- A fine rain or thick mist; mizzle.
verb
- To rain in fine drops; to mizzle.
- To mislead.e.g.“I think Caspari has been misling you somewhat on the subject of Scenedesmus: the cells divide essentially as in Chlorella, but stay in 4 or 8-celled colonies until the next division.” — 1955 June, Ralph A. Lewin, “letter to Joshua Lederberg”, in Profiles in Science, U.S. National Library of Medicine:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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