Wrong
adjectiveNot correct, not true, or not in accordance with what is right or appropriate.
How to spell wrong
5 letters · 1 syllable
How to pronounce wrong
What does wrong mean?
- adjectiveNot correct, not true, or not in accordance with what is right or appropriate.
Wrong in a sentence
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I think you've got the wrong address.
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Something feels wrong about the answer.
Where does wrong come from?
Language of origin: Old Norse
The word comes from the Old English wrang, borrowed in turn from Old Norse rangr, meaning 'crooked', 'awry', or 'unjust'. The underlying idea is something physically twisted or bent out of true, which the Norse and Anglo-Saxon speakers extended to anything morally or factually 'not straight'. The same root sits behind the modern verb 'wring', meaning to twist or squeeze, which is a useful memory hook: what is wrong has been twisted out of shape. The silent initial w- once represented a sound that English actually pronounced before words like wring, write, and wrist, but the lips stopped making it centuries ago while the spelling stubbornly stayed. That preserved but unspoken w- is precisely the spelling trap, because the word now sounds as if it simply begins with an r.
How the word is built
- wrong (a single Germanic root meaning 'twisted, crooked'); the silent w- is a frozen historical spelling
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