misnomer means A mistake in the naming of a person or place; a misidentification. It carries an Arena rating of 1677, earned across 5 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, misnomer ranks #2,104 of 17,138 for Most Incisive Words, #2,302 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #4,428 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #5,244 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words.
misnomer is pronounced /(ˌ)mɪsˈnəʊmə/.
Why “misnomer” is a great word
An incorrect or misleading name or designation for a person or thing. From Anglo-Norman and Old French mesnomer ("to name incorrectly"), from mes- ("badly, wrongly") + nomer ("to name"), from Latin nōmināre ("to name"), from nōmen ("name"), first attested in English in the mid-15th century. Unlike an "error" (a general mistake) or a "misconception" (a flawed idea), a misnomer is a flaw embedded in the very label we use to call a thing forth. It is the "lead" in a pencil that contains no lead, the "French horn" that is actually German, the "shooting star" that is only dust burning in the atmosphere—a quiet friction between word and world, where what we say refuses to match what is.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Late Middle English misnoumer (“(law) mistaken identification of a person; plea based on such misidentification”), from Anglo-Norman mesnomer, a noun use of Anglo-Norman mesnomer, mesnommer, and Old French mesnomer, mesnommer (“to name incorrectly”), from mes- (prefix meaning ‘badly, wrongly’) + nomer, nommer (“to name”) (from Latin nōmināre, the present active infinitive of nōminō (“to name”), from nōmen (“name”) (from Proto-Indo-European *h₁nómn̥ (“name”)) + -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs)). The verb is derived from the noun.
noun
- A mistake in the naming of a person or place; a misidentification.
- An incorrect use of a term, especially one which is misleading; a misname.e.g.“[…] plaintiff's misstyling himself as corporation in initial complaint constituted case of misnomer.” — 1994, Illinois. Appellate Court, Stephen Davis Porter, Illinois Appellate reports, page 257:
- A term which is misleading, even if firmly established, technically correct, or both.e.g.“The name Chinese checkers is a misnomer since the game has nothing to do with China.”
- Something which is asserted not to be true; a mistaken belief, a falsehood, a myth.e.g.“It’s a misnomer that all doctors have bad handwriting.”
verb
- To use an incorrect, and especially misleading, name for (someone or something); to misidentify, to misname.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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