Misaddresses

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To wrongly attribute a location or title to a person or object
2. To inaccurately direct messages or deliveries to the unintended party
3. To mark or label something with an erroneous destination, causing it to reach the wrong individual or address

Etymology: "Misaddresses" is the third-person singular present form of "misaddress", so the verb itself is simple: it means to give a wrong address to something or someone. The base word "address" has a longer story. It descends from Latin "directus", meaning straight or direct, which passed into Vulgar Latin as "dīrēctiāre" and then into Old French as "dreciier", meaning to set straight or guide. Middle English borrowed the French form as "adressen", and over time it came to mean both directing something toward a destination and the speech or written label that does the directing. The prefix "mis-" is an older, native English element, coming from Old English and carrying the sense of wrong or amiss. Attaching it to "address" produces a verb meaning to direct, label, or title something incorrectly. The formation is a plain compound, a native prefix on a borrowed base, so the meaning follows directly from its parts.

Synonyms: misdirects, mislabels, misnames

Antonyms: addresses, corrects