mispronounce
Americanverb (used with or without object)
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mispronounces,
present (3rd person singular)
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mispronounced,
past participle, past
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mispronouncing
present participle
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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mispronouncesimple
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mispronouncessimple
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have mispronouncedperfect
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has mispronouncedperfect
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am mispronouncingprogressive
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are mispronouncingprogressive
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is mispronouncingprogressive
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have been mispronouncingperfect progressive
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has been mispronouncingperfect progressive
Past
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mispronouncedsimple
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had mispronouncedperfect
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was mispronouncingprogressive
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were mispronouncingprogressive
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had been mispronouncingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of mispronounce
Explanation
To mispronounce is to say something incorrectly. It can be pretty awkward when you mispronounce someone's name, especially if you know the person well. Some words are easy to mispronounce, like February, realtor, and meteorology, simply because the sounds don't flow gracefully off the tongue. In other cases, non-native English speakers might mispronounce a word because it doesn't sound at all the way it looks — like tongue, for example. In any case, the verb mispronounce combines the prefix mis-, "wrong or bad," and pronounce, "to utter or say."
Vocabulary lists containing mispronounce
Selection Vocabulary 2, Unit 3
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noun, nunc (declare)
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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:
We all stumble over and mispronounce words occasionally.
From Salon ● Mar. 7, 2024
The findings also suggest that when listening to children, adult listeners incorporate expectations of how children commonly mispronounce words, such as "weed" for "read."
From Science Daily ● Oct. 26, 2023
“And the cheer for Musl— we cheer for Muslim athletes, like Kareem Al-J—Al-J— Abdul-Jabbar. I know him and I did mispronounce his name.”
From Washington Times ● May 3, 2023
“To mispronounce it over and over and over again, it’s like … I just want to answer it fully in French. So it is tricky.”
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 21, 2022
Again, while others had great difficulty in understanding me, I couldn’t hear myself mispronounce words.
From "Bad Boy" by Walter Dean Myers
For example, in the Sally Bundock video, the "presenter" mispronounces 15 as "fife-teen", as well as oddly pronouncing project as "pro-ject".
From BBC ● Oct. 4, 2023
Biden mispronounces Jon Ossoff's name at Georgia rally in latest gaffe President-elect Joe Biden butchered the name of Georgia Democratic Senate hopeful John Ossoff during an election event Tuesday ahead of the crucial runoff races.
From Fox News ● Dec. 16, 2020
From the books' title, there's the young girl who mispronounces "knife" in class because that's how her father sounds it out.
From Salon ● Apr. 7, 2020
She often mispronounces words, but then commits to the mistake, making it amusing.
From New York Times ● Mar. 29, 2020
Girl is born, girl learns to talk and walk, girl mispronounces words and falls down.
From "Wintergirls" by Laurie Halse Anderson
He started as a rapper who called himself Shaboozey—the moniker came from a high-school football coach who mispronounced his last name—but no single musical form captured the range of his interests.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 4, 2026
The uniforms are generic camouflage ones easily bought online, while the Ukrainian words are heavily mispronounced and spoken with a strong Russian accent.
From BBC ● Jun. 23, 2025
In response, I tirelessly corrected people who mispronounced my name or purposely tried to assign me another one.
From Salon ● Feb. 22, 2025
Occasional glitches — a mispronounced word, a missing intonation — were mostly imperceptible.
From Seattle Times ● May 13, 2024
“How in the world do you spell that?” he’d asked, and when she told him, he mispronounced it, as most people did.
From "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri
He got the name of the mayor, Zohran Mamdani, wrong, mispronouncing it in a different way every time he said it.
From Salon ● Sep. 11, 2026
The criticism began as soon as the film's trailer was shared, with many puzzling over Sundari seemingly mispronouncing her own name.
From BBC ● Sep. 5, 2025
He changed his surname in the 1970s, he said, because people kept mispronouncing it.
From New York Times ● Feb. 23, 2024
“My real name is ‘Kelss,’” he said on an episode of “Bussin’ With the Boys,” causing a minor uproar with NFL fans worried we had been mispronouncing the name for a decade.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 30, 2023
Which I only know because I heard someone call it, and I thought they were mispronouncing my name, so I turned.
From "Fast Pitch" by Nic Stone
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
