Misclassify

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To assign someone or something incorrectly to a category or group
2. To wrongly place an item or person into an inappropriate classification
3. To categorize inaccurately by putting into a mistaken group or class

Etymology: The verb "misclassify" is a plain compound: the prefix "mis-" joined to "classify." The prefix comes from Old English "mis-," meaning "wrong" or "amiss," and it descends from a Proto-Germanic root shared with words like "miss" in the sense of failing to hit a target. In English it has long been productive, attaching to verbs to mean doing something incorrectly, as in "misread" or "mislead." "Classify" is the older partner. It was formed from the Latin "classis," a division of the Roman people by property and military service, combined with a Latin-derived suffix meaning "to make." So "classify" means to sort things into classes, and "misclassify" simply reverses the error: putting something into the wrong class.

Synonyms: mislabel, mistake, misidentify, misjudge, err

Antonyms: classify, identify, categorize, label, sort