Mistakes

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /mɪˈsteɪks/

Definitions

1. Errors or faults made by a person in action or judgment
2. Acts or decisions that are incorrect or misguided
3. Instances of doing something wrong or making incorrect choices

Etymology: "Mistakes" is the plural of "mistake", a noun derived from the verb of the same spelling. The verb came into Middle English from Old Norse "mistaka", meaning "to take in error" or "to miscarry", and it is built from the prefix "mis-", meaning wrongly, plus "take". So at its root the idea is literally taking something the wrong way. The noun is the more recent arrival. It replaced an older noun, "mistaking", and developed from the verb, which is why it looks so like the verb's ordinary form. Related forms survive across Scandinavia: Swedish has "misstag" and Icelandic has "mistak", both meaning a mistake, showing that the same Norse verb gave rise to a matching noun in several languages.

Synonyms: errors, blunders, misjudgments, oversights, slips

Antonyms: corrections, perfections, accuracies, truths