Misinterpreted

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Understood in a way that was not intended or is wrong
2. Interpreted with a mistaken meaning different from the original intent
3. Grasped or explained inaccurately, leading to confusion or error

Etymology: "Misinterpreted" is the past tense and past participle of "misinterpret," so its history is that of its two parts. The prefix "mis-" comes from Old English, where it carried the sense of "wrongly" or "amiss," and it has been a productive element in English ever since. Its ancestry runs back through Proto-Germanic to a root that also gave us the idea of error or failure in several related languages. The second part, "interpret," was borrowed from Latin "interpretari," meaning to explain or translate, built from "inter" (between) and "pretium" (price or value), a pairing that hints at the idea of mediating between one language or meaning and another. Joining "mis-" to "interpret" produced a verb meaning to understand something in a way that the speaker did not intend, which is why the word so often appears when a message has gone astray.

Synonyms: misunderstood, misconstrued, misread, mistaken, misjudged

Antonyms: understood, interpreted, comprehended, grasped