Misunderstood

How to spell misunderstood

13 letters · 4 syllables

How to pronounce misunderstood

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does misunderstood mean?

1. verbPast tense and past participle of misunderstand: to have failed to grasp something correctly.
2. adjectiveWrongly judged or interpreted; not correctly perceived by others.

Misunderstood in a sentence

• verb

  The contractor misunderstood the measurements and cut the panels too short.

• adjective

  He felt deeply misunderstood by the colleagues who doubted his motives.

• verb

  She realised her assistant had misunderstood the deadline by a full week.

• adjective

  The policy remains widely misunderstood despite the official explanation.

Where does misunderstood come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word is built entirely from old Germanic, native English parts, which is why it looks long but contains no foreign spelling traps. The base verb 'understand' comes from the Old English 'understandan', literally 'to stand under' or 'stand among', a vivid image of placing yourself close to something in order to grasp it. To that was added the prefix 'mis-', also from Old English, carrying the sense of 'wrongly' or 'amiss', the same prefix you see in 'mistake' and 'misjudge'. The past form follows the irregular pattern of 'stand', which becomes 'stood', so 'understand' becomes 'understood' and the negative becomes 'misunderstood'. The word has been used in English since at least the 1500s, and its modern double life as both a plain past tense and an adjective for a person whose true nature is wrongly judged grew steadily from that single root.

How the word is built

• mis- (wrongly)
• under (beneath, among)
• stand (to grasp)
• -ood (irregular past form of 'stand', as in 'stood')