misrede means to advise unwisely or to bad purpose; miscounsel; misadvise. It carries an Arena rating of 1586, earned across 11 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, misrede ranks #1,496 of 17,132 for Most Betrayed by Its Sound, #2,361 of 17,151 for The Improbable, #3,127 of 17,131 for Scariest Words, #3,587 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words.
Why “misrede” is a great word
To give bad or unwise advice; to counsel someone toward a poor or harmful course of action. From Old English *misrǣdan* ("to advise wrongly, read wrongly"), a compound of *mis-* ("badly, wrongly") and *rǣd* ("counsel, advice"), first attested in Old English around 1390. Unlike *misadvise*, a blunt modern instrument, or *miscounsel*, which suggests a formal error in judgment, to misrede is to offer a poisoned chalice with sincere conviction. It is the fervent whisper that leads a king to a doomed war, the earnest map that directs a traveler into a bog, the trusted elder steering a youth from a true calling—the tragedy of guidance, sincerely given and fatally flawed, the ancient art of dressing ruin in the garments of care.
Etymology
From Middle English misreden, from Old English misrǣdan (“to advise wrongly; read wrongly”), equivalent to mis- + rede. Compare misread.
verb
- To advise unwisely or to bad purpose; miscounsel; misadvise.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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