misaligned

American  

[mis-uh-lahynd] / ˌmɪs əˈlaɪnd /

adjective

1. improperly or badly adjusted or aligned; out of line or position.

   The benefits of correcting misaligned teeth are many.

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misaligned British  

/ ˌmɪsəˈlaɪnd /

adjective

1. placed or positioned wrongly or badly

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Usage

What does misaligned mean? Misaligned describes someone or something that is improperly adjusted or out of its proper form or position. Misaligned is frequently used in a figurative sense, especially to describe goals or ideas that don’t work together. For example, if your parents’ goal for you is to get good grades and your goal is to do as little schoolwork as possible, your parents’ and your goals are likely misaligned because the surest way to get good grades is to do the schoolwork. People might also be figuratively said to be misaligned, especially in relationships of all sorts. If you like staying up late and listening to loud music but your roommate likes going to bed early and a quiet room, the two of you might be misaligned—at least as roommates. Literally, something that is misaligned is out of its normal orientation or order in some way. Picture a row of chairs. If all of them are in a straight line, we say that they are aligned. If some of the chairs are farther forward than others, we say that the row of chairs is misaligned. Two or more things that can be arranged in a specific way in relation to each other, such as in a line or on an angle, can be misaligned. In medicine, one of the most common uses of misaligned is in reference to bones not lining up correctly. When a bone is out of place in the body it can lead to stiffness, pain, and other problems. Example: My teeth were so misaligned that I needed braces to fix them.

Other Word Forms

• misalignment
  noun

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Etymology

Origin of misaligned

First recorded in 1915–20; misalign ( def. ) + -ed ²

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

misaligned

Her statements always seemed misaligned with the evidence, as if she were so convinced of her company’s virtue that she didn’t care about the eerie dissonance between her reality and the world’s.

From Salon ● Oct. 17, 2026

“We are racing to build and grow our own adversary here at home, which is misaligned AI,” Turner said.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 5, 2026

OpenAI said it only became aware of the incident in August "during an ongoing review" of "misaligned model activity", and told Australian officials on 10 September.

From BBC ● Sep. 23, 2026

"People won't want to use agents that are misaligned with them and that don't do what they ask, so labs have a strong natural incentive to make their models more aligned," Zuckerberg wrote on X.

From Barron's ● Sep. 16, 2026

Stan, for example, a twenty-something fellow with wildly misaligned teeth, is so eager to talk that he fairly pounces on the seat next to mine on a bench in the smoking area.

From "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America" by Barbara Ehrenreich

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