Mistakenly

How to spell mistakenly

10 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce mistakenly

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does mistakenly mean?

1. adverbIn a way that is wrong or based on an error; by mistake.

Mistakenly in a sentence

• The parcel was mistakenly delivered to the house next door.

• He mistakenly assumed the meeting had been cancelled.

Where does mistakenly come from?

Language of origin: Old Norse

This adverb is built on the verb 'mistake', which English assembled in the 1300s from the prefix 'mis-', meaning 'wrongly' or 'badly', and the verb 'take'. The verb 'take' itself was borrowed from the Old Norse 'taka', meaning 'to grasp or seize', brought to England by Scandinavian settlers. So 'mistake' literally meant 'to take wrongly', that is, to grasp the wrong thing or grasp something in the wrong way, which slid neatly into the modern sense of 'to get something wrong'. The past participle 'mistaken' then took the adverb ending '-ly' to give 'mistakenly', describing an action done in error. The spelling trap lies in that quiet middle: the '-en-' before '-ly' is fully pronounced as a faint schwa, so writers sometimes drop a letter or muddle the ending.

How the word is built

• mis- (wrongly)
• take (from Old Norse taka: to take)
• -en (past participle)
• -ly (adverb)