Mischief

How to spell mischief

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce mischief

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mischief mean?

1. nounPlayful or annoying behaviour that causes minor trouble, or the harm resulting from it.

Mischief in a sentence

• The children were up to mischief.

• The puppy was up to all sorts of mischief.

• She had a glint of mischief in her eyes.

Where does mischief come from?

Language of origin: French

The word comes from Old French meschief, meaning 'misfortune' or 'calamity', formed from the prefix mes- (wrongly or badly) and the verb chever (to come to a head or to bring to an end), which itself traces back to the Latin caput, meaning 'head'. So at root mischief literally described something that 'came to a bad end'. English borrowed it in the 1300s with that grim sense of harm, ruin, or injury, and for centuries it really did mean serious damage. Only later, by around the 1700s, did the tone soften into the familiar modern idea of playful misbehaviour or harmless trouble-making. The spelling trap survives from its French ancestry: the -ie- in 'chief' follows the i-before-e pattern, but the unstressed final syllable sounds like a vague 'uff', which tempts writers toward 'mischeif' or 'mischif'.

How the word is built

• mis- (wrongly, badly)
• chief (from Old French chever: to come to a head, to bring about)