Misconception

How to spell misconception

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce misconception

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does misconception mean?

1. nounA view or opinion that is incorrect because it rests on faulty thinking or understanding.

Misconception in a sentence

• A common misconception is that bottled water is always purer than tap water.

• The training session was designed to correct every misconception new staff had about the software.

Where does misconception come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word builds on the Latin verb concipere, meaning 'to take in' or 'to conceive', which was formed from con- 'together' and capere 'to take' or 'to grasp'. From that came the idea of grasping something mentally, a notion forming in the mind, which English borrowed through French as 'conception'. The native English prefix mis-, meaning 'wrongly' or 'badly', was then attached to make 'misconception', a faultily formed idea or a wrong understanding; the word appears in English from the 1600s. The same capere root, glossed as 'to take', also sits inside familiar relatives such as 'capture', 'receive', and 'accept'. For the speller, the trap is the soft c sounds in the middle: 'con-CEPT-ion' is spelled with two c's, not an s, and the silent grasp of cept keeps the p that you can scarcely hear.

How the word is built

• mis- (wrong, badly)
• con- (together)
• cept (from capere: to take, grasp)
• -ion (noun suffix)