misfit
Americanverb (used with or without object)
noun
-
misfits
plural
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something that fits badly, such as a garment that is too large or too small.
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a person who is not suited or is unable to adjust to the circumstances of a particular situation.
She was a misfit in that job after her big promotion.
noun
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a person not suited in behaviour or attitude to a particular social environment
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something that does not fit or fits badly
verb
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of misfit
Explanation
A person who just can't seem to fit in, no matter how hard they try, is called a misfit. If all of your friends are great dancers, but you are awkward and uncoordinated with no sense of rhythm, you might feel like a misfit. Often, people who are misfits as kids eventually find other misfits to be friends with: suddenly, because they've found a group that accepts them and makes them feel comfortable; they're not misfits anymore. In the early nineteenth century, the word misfit meant "a garment that fits badly," but by the end of the 1800s it had come to primarily mean "outcast" or "oddball." The fit in both cases is wrong, thus the prefix mis-, or "wrong."
Vocabulary lists containing misfit
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Prefixes: mis-
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mis-
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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:
The 41-year-old royal misfit has long struggled with the monarchy's strictures, shaking off the angry young man and "playboy prince" tags only to find himself at loggerheads with his closest relatives.
From Barron's ● Aug. 23, 2026
Employed but adrift, he seeks out Franca, a former girlfriend and fellow misfit in their school days.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 26, 2026
Despite Mary’s misfit qualities, she exhibits a kindness that even the sweetest of her sisters, Jane, lacks.
From Salon ● Jun. 25, 2026
And it was delightful to see him exchange quirky misfit sparks with Salonga during their duet of “Suddenly Seymour,” one of the rare moments when the singers were allowed to join forces.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 22, 2026
I’m sure she solaced herself by being convinced that some misfit Maingault or Mortemar had got mixed up with the lodge-keeper’s daughter.
From "The Sound and the Fury" by William Faulkner
They called in a crowd from society’s margins: a community “of DJs, dancers, strippers, tattoo artists, of the alternative world, the more gothic world, the misfits themselves,” says Cisternas.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 22, 2026
The one who turned a cast of footballing misfits into an all-conquering force.
From BBC ● Aug. 25, 2026
The klan was a handful of misfits who screwed up everything they tried to do.
From Slate ● Aug. 22, 2026
Here, “Tony” is in its element as Johnson crafts the intimidating yet irresistible camaraderie of a kitchen, and all of the misfits who work inside it.
From Salon ● Aug. 12, 2026
I figured it was because I knew he would have a good comeback, or maybe it was because he wasn’t a regular in the cast of misfits who hung out at Fang’s.
From "Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet" by Joanne Proulx
Director Guillermo del Toro called him "one of the patron saints of all misfitted, weird, maladjusted, wonderful, miraculous oddities".
From BBC ● Jul. 31, 2023
Richmond’s mayor got busy hiring cranes, history birthed another amalgam, and the statues have wound up pared from six to a misfitted two: Ashe and Robert E. Lee.
From Washington Post ● Jul. 10, 2020
I assure you, I am worse misfitted than is Master Yardstick yonder in those Falstaffian hose.
From To Have and to Hold by Mary Johnston
Ivar's bandy legs seemed to have grown shorter with years, and they were completely misfitted to his broad, thick body and heavy shoulders.
From O Pioneers! by Willa Sibert Cather
Virginia is at once the most thorough and the most pathetic picture extant of the American woman as Victorianism conceived and shaped and misfitted her.
From Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) by Carl Van Doren
Bras have been misfitting for years; suppliers failing to approximate women’s actual shapes.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 26, 2018
Suddenly, all the misfitting parts of me came into an orderly pattern, and there wasn’t anything to lose by following it.
From Salon ● Apr. 20, 2014
When a two-suiter faces a misfitting hand, it is bad news for that side.
From New York Times ● Jan. 26, 2014
Through the body of their Freudian existence, O'Neill has rammed the misfitting dramatic skeleton of the Greek trilogy, Oresteia.
From Time Magazine Archive
Small wonder that, sitting by her lonely hearthstone,—a borrowed stove that supplemented the unfinished fireplace,—surrounded by her mismatched furniture and clad in misfitting garments, she had contracted a habit of sniffling during her dreary watches.
From By Shore and Sedge by Bret Harte
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
