misfire
Americanverb (used without object)
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misfires,
present (3rd person singular)
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misfired,
past participle, past
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misfiring
present participle
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(of a rifle or gun or of a bullet or shell) to fail to fire or explode.
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(of an internal-combustion engine) to fail to ignite properly or when expected.
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to fail to achieve the desired result, effect, etc..
His criticisms completely misfired.
noun
verb
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(of a firearm or its projectile) to fail to fire, explode, or ignite as or when expected
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(of a motor engine or vehicle, etc) to fail to fire at the appropriate time, often causing a backfire
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to fail to operate or occur as intended
noun
Other Word Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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misfiresimple
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misfiressimple
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have misfiredperfect
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has misfiredperfect
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am misfiringprogressive
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are misfiringprogressive
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is misfiringprogressive
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have been misfiringperfect progressive
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has been misfiringperfect progressive
Past
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misfiredsimple
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had misfiredperfect
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was misfiringprogressive
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were misfiringprogressive
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had been misfiringperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of misfire
Explanation
When an engine or weapon misfires, it doesn't function or ignite correctly. When a plan misfires, it doesn't work quite the way you imagined it would. The original meaning of misfire is gun-related; when pulling a trigger doesn't result in the gun firing, the gun misfires. Around the turn of the 20th century, the word began to be used for combustion engines that couldn't get started because their fuel wouldn't ignite. Figuratively, misfire is good for describing ideas that don't ignite: "I'm afraid my plan to talk my parents into taking us to Disney World may misfire in the end."
Vocabulary lists containing misfire
Loaded Words from the Gun Violence Debate
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Prefixes: 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:
Step back, and the strategic picture is bleak for the people who planned this misfire.
From Salon ● Oct. 1, 2026
Good Good Golf’s CEO and president are leaving the company in the latest fallout from its ad misfire with Callaway.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 3, 2026
And yes, he did have this particular misfire that first year.
From Salon ● Jul. 5, 2026
It's thought pain receptors in the blood vessels and nerve tissue around the brain misfire - sending incorrect signals that something is wrong.
From BBC ● May 31, 2025
Anyone who knows anything about firearms will tell you that a 9mm handgun cannot misfire in the way that gun did.
From "Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood" by Trevor Noah
Even if Pangram misfires on a given op-ed, the study’s broader pattern—that A.I. use is showing up across major newspaper opinion pages, his own included—is impossible to argue with.
From Slate ● Apr. 17, 2026
Intel has had strategic misfires for decades, Meeks said, and government support won’t be enough to save it.
From Barron's ● Mar. 25, 2026
An Oxford-educated philosopher from rural Scotland, Askell spends her days learning Claude’s reasoning patterns and talking to the AI model, building its personality and addressing its misfires with long prompts.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 13, 2026
For each of those successes, there are several messy misfires: The wan camp of “The Politician.”
From Salon ● Feb. 12, 2026
“Don’t be so sure—and don’t be so hard on yourself, kid. The transporter misfires now and again, but Ma don’t make mistakes. Could be this is all part of her plan.”
From "Dragons in a Bag" by Zetta Elliott
It also represents the first release from the Meta Superintelligence Labs that the company rushed to build up last year after Llama misfired.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 10, 2026
And having misfired of late, polls suggest that Japan's first woman Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi might manage to bring back the glory days with a thumping election win on Sunday.
From Barron's ● Feb. 6, 2026
Cohen says that progressives have misfired in their decision to challenge him.
From Salon ● Oct. 14, 2025
In the eighth, San Diego reliever Adrian Morejon misfired on the most routine of throws to first base with two outs, letting Shohei Ohtani reach second, but then struck out Freddie Freeman to escape unscathed.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 10, 2025
Her engine misfired continuously, and Barlow lacked the mechanical knowledge to remedy its ailment.
From Big Timber A Story of the Northwest by Bertrand W. Sinclair
Rybakina won the first set despite her serve, one of her biggest weapons, misfiring.
From BBC ● Sep. 13, 2026
Fritz finally got the job done after one hour and 49 minutes, Jodar misfiring on a pair of forehands to bring it to a close.
From Barron's ● Aug. 3, 2026
Brainwashing isn’t enough: “To turn you into a willful collaborator, I need to also attack your emotional system. Empathy is an adaptive virtue. Suicidal empathy is the misfiring of this adaptive process.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 10, 2026
Vance has been repeatedly ratioed on X ever since, a small but telling sign that the usual outrage machine is misfiring.
From Salon ● Jan. 14, 2026
Just one enzyme misfiring, just one wrong protein activation, and you could have cancer.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
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.
