Misinterpret

Part of speech: verb

Pronunciation: /ˌmɪs.ɪnˈtɜː.pɹɪt/

Definitions

1. To perceive or explain information in an inaccurate way leading to misunderstanding the intended meaning
2. To understand or judge something incorrectly by assigning the wrong sense or significance
3. To misconstrue or wrongly decode information, causing confusion about its true message

Etymology: The prefix "mis-" is one of English's oldest word-building tools. It descends from a Proto-Germanic root that meant something like "wrong" or "amiss," which passed into Old English as "mis-" and was used freely to form new compounds. Its ancient ancestry is hard to overstate: the same element survives in "mistake," "miss," and "misery," even though those words no longer look like they share a prefix. "Interpret" arrived in English from Latin "interpretari," meaning to explain or translate, and it was a word of scholars and translators long before it described everyday understanding. Joining "mis-" to it produced a verb meaning simply to understand something wrongly. The compound is transparent, built the way countless English words are built, so its history lies mostly in the two parts it combines.

Synonyms: misunderstand, misconstrue, misread

Antonyms: understand, interpret