misfit
Americanverb (used with or without object)
noun
-
something that fits badly, such as a garment that is too large or too small.
-
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
-
a person not suited in behaviour or attitude to a particular social environment
-
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:
"It became the perfect medium to express this feeling of being a misfit," she says.
From BBC ● May 15, 2026
She knew what “The Muppet Show” star symbolized and recognized what she meant to her misfit youngest, a zaftig kid frequently chided for taking up too much space.
From Salon ● Feb. 28, 2026
In the angsty romance, he played the popular working-class boy in a secret relationship with a wealthy social misfit.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 20, 2026
Anyone who’s ever felt like an oddball or unappreciated genius will identify with the misfit Mitchells and their pet Monchi, who appears to be more goblin than dog.
From Salon ● Dec. 24, 2025
He already felt like enough of a misfit without trying to explain his new undead minion.
From "The Son of Neptune" by Rick Riordan
A ragtag group of Duffer Brothers misfits teaming up to fight off eldritch horror might be the last safe bet in television.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 8, 2026
The automaker brought together Silicon Valley techies and industry misfits in a quest to beat China at EVs.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 5, 2026
As it turns out, Michigan’s misfits had turned into something else: national champions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 7, 2026
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer” still connects with so many people because it empowers its outcasts and misfits.
From Salon ● Mar. 26, 2026
Alas, this gaggle of uncoordinated misfits was rounded up each week and made to play some sort of sport against each other.
From "Ugly" by Robert Hoge
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
Old Hicks fitted, or rather misfitted, him in a faded blue tailed coat and a topper, Jarvis looked like an Otto Gushing cartoon of Apollo in the attire, but he never once thought of that.
From Bambi by Cooke, Marjorie Benton
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 Howes, S. O. (Silas Orrin)
I assure you, I am worse misfitted than is Master Yardstick yonder in those Falstaffian hose.
From To Have and to Hold by Johnston, Mary
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
All that hunger for Life, for Love, for Beauty, for Sympathy, to be blunted once for all in a stale, misfitting, ready-made home?
From The Sick-a-Bed Lady And Also Hickory Dock, The Very Tired Girl, The Happy-Day, Something That Happened in October, The Amateur Lover, Heart of The City, The Pink Sash, Woman's Only Business by Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell
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.
