misdirect
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
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to give (a person) wrong directions or instructions
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to address (a letter, parcel, etc) wrongly
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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misdirectsimple
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misdirectssimple
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have misdirectedperfect
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has misdirectedperfect
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am misdirectingprogressive
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are misdirectingprogressive
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is misdirectingprogressive
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have been misdirectingperfect progressive
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has been misdirectingperfect progressive
Past
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misdirectedsimple
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had misdirectedperfect
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was misdirectingprogressive
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were misdirectingprogressive
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had been misdirectingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of misdirect
Vocabulary lists containing misdirect
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
He said Mr Justice Bright did misdirect the jury about the waiver, but only on it being potentially "decisive" if it were a civil trial instead of a criminal one.
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026
It is kind of like the ultimate misdirect, you know what I mean?
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 18, 2025
We can’t afford to let the banks misdirect us again.
From Slate ● Mar. 22, 2024
“Baylor’s focus of media attention on football tried to misdirect attention from institutional failures of the Baylor administration. Our clients would have none of that,” Dunn said.
From Seattle Times ● Sep. 18, 2023
She initially attempted to misdirect the officer and the investigators in an effort to protect her privacy.
From "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson
My brother and I worked really hard in the writing to answer all the questions for ourselves, but then to create all these misdirects for the audience.
From The Verge ● Oct. 18, 2019
The writer advised readers to avoid a chessboard “as they would an adder’s nest” because “chess misdirects and exhausts their intellectual energies.”
From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2016
A master magician with words, Deaver misdirects with one tale while what's really going on is just off the reader's radar.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 3, 2013
The Colts were not going to trade that pick, and despite Jim Irsay’s misdirects, they weren’t going to take Griffin.
From Washington Post ● Aug. 20, 2012
Sedentary life chokes and misdirects the currents of nervous energy and the very circulation of the blood.
From The Social Emergency Studies in Sex Hygiene and Morals by Foster, William Trufant
Today’s critique of land power isn’t entirely wrong, but it is misdirected.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 3, 2026
If AI was used, he argued that the key question is "how old was the data" used for the targeting, and whether the misdirected strike stemmed from "a database error".
From Barron's ● Mar. 7, 2026
By the time couples notice, the pressure is already there, and it often gets misdirected at each other.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 20, 2026
Rather than reflecting a loss of control due to runaway habits, some compulsive behaviors may result from excessive, though misdirected, deliberate control.
From Science Daily ● Feb. 16, 2026
But misdirected rage is not an easy thing to hold on to; the last sparks of it get snuffed out, as they deserve to be, in the icy waters of humiliation and defeat.
From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich
In the heat-soaked world of Marty Hart and Rust Cohle, creepiness was an affectation — part misdirecting figment, part metaphor.
From Salon ● Feb. 5, 2024
Furious, Strowger blamed the operators for misdirecting calls meant for him to his competitors, and set about inventing a bias-free, electromechanical machine to replace them.
From Seattle Times ● Jan. 26, 2024
The discovery that Ms. Holmes, the tech industry’s most celebrated female entrepreneur, was misdirecting the world about her company marked a turning point in the tech press, ending a decade-long run of largely positive coverage.
From New York Times ● Nov. 18, 2021
Is the talking fox helping him or misdirecting him?
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 7, 2021
But Kronos was always fooling us, misdirecting our attention.
From "The Last Olympian" by Rick Riordan
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
