misdirect
Americanverb (used with object)
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misdirects,
present (3rd person singular)
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misdirected,
past participle, past
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misdirecting
present participle
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:
Campbell appealed, saying one of her fellow trustees, lawyer Bianka Hellmich, forged her signature and impersonated her using a fake email address to misdirect money that was intended for the charity.
From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2026
They are so smart, often harder to misdirect, harder to kind of just psychologically go the way that you predict.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 16, 2025
So juxtaposing that line with footage of the adult Yellowjackets being threatened with evidence of their shared past — again — could be a misdirect.
From Salon ● Feb. 10, 2025
We can’t afford to let the banks misdirect us again.
From Slate ● Mar. 22, 2024
“Somehow we think it is funny to misdirect people and we don’t smile when we do it, but we laugh inwardly. It is our nature.”
From "Travels with Charley in Search of America" by John Steinbeck
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
It seems to me, on the contrary, to be a harmful one, inasmuch as it misdirects the mind of a people, already little open to pure artistic emotion, as to the special function of Art.
From The Life, Letters and Work of Frederic Leighton Volume II by Mrs. Russell Barrington
But, if he wrote to prove genius as a prognosticator, it’s a misdirected column.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 19, 2026
Today’s critique of land power isn’t entirely wrong, but it is misdirected.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 3, 2026
But he thinks some of that feeling is misdirected.
From Barron's ● Apr. 3, 2026
By the time couples notice, the pressure is already there, and it often gets misdirected at each other.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 20, 2026
Ethan is not in the courtyard as promised, but after several misdirected attempts, I eventually find him at the lavanderia, the ancient washing basins next to the gardens.
From "The Adoration of Jenna Fox" by Mary E. Pearson
"That gets worse in the summer when the water is moving slowly, and some of that is historic, but also a contemporary misdirecting of sewage into storm drains."
From BBC ● Sep. 30, 2026
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
As Elizabeth asks questions of Gracie, she is fishing for insights into her character — and Gracie may be withholding or even misdirecting.
From Salon ● Dec. 1, 2023
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
I might have been to blame for misdirecting us, but for this, I blame Henry.
From "Dry" by Neal Shusterman and Jarrod Shusterman
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.
