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
At his public school in Baltimore, Leibowitz wrote in a biographical note, “I covered three grades in two years but I was a misfit and I struggled.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 25, 2026
"It became the perfect medium to express this feeling of being a misfit," she says.
From BBC ● May 15, 2026
And it’s natural to be upset at an author for poisoning the once-beautiful misfit haven she created.
From Salon ● Apr. 2, 2026
It might have been nice, but I knew it wasn’t going to happen for the misfit in the stands no matter how good I was feeling.
From "Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet" by Joanne Proulx
The klan was a handful of misfits who screwed up everything they tried to do.
From Slate ● Aug. 22, 2026
Unlike most of the Slough House misfits, River often drives the action sequences, which means you do a lot of running.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 17, 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
And more often than not, they were misfits on their former teams.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 15, 2026
Since we didn’t have a mother at home, Junior and I were the misfits in our community.
From "A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah
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
If he can not persuade him to come to the dispensary and take medicine there is an end to the matter, and he may justly conclude that he is misfitted to his vocation.
From The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays 1909 by S. O. (Silas Orrin) Howes
The nation may be misfitted with its laws, and need to change them: some particular corn law may hurt all industry, and it may be worth a thousand administrative blunders to get rid of it.
From The English Constitution by Walter Bagehot
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
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
With the misfitting door and cracked sides it is much like a sieve.
From Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, Volume I (of 2) Including a Summer in the Upper Karun Region and a Visit to the Nestorian Rayahs by Isabella L. (Isabella Lucy) Bird
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.
