adjective
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consisting of or resembling mist
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obscured by or as if by mist
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indistinct; blurred
the misty past
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Adjectives
Etymology
Origin of misty
before 900; Middle English; Old English mistig. See mist, -y 1
Explanation
When it's misty out, there's a heavy fog. The air is thick with moisture, and there's just barely a light rain. When the air is foggy or hazy, you've got a misty situation. It isn't easy to see through misty weather, which happens most often in the morning because of moisture in the air. Your eyes can get misty too, when you're about to cry because you're sad or just have allergies. In fact, people who are embarrassed about crying will often joke, "It's getting misty in here."
Vocabulary lists containing misty
Beowulf vocabulary
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Common Suffixes: -y
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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:
North Sea coasts from Northumberland to Suffolk could remain cloudy and misty on Saturday but should be much sunnier on Sunday.
From BBC ● Jul. 11, 2026
What follows is a soaring, visionary narrative that connects the known world to the misty realms of Celtic legend.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
A striking new pitviper with a vivid grass-green body and amber-like eyes has been discovered in the misty mountains of western Sichuan, China.
From Science Daily ● Apr. 22, 2026
On a misty winter's day in the English midlands, engineers struggled to drag stranded narrowboats from a waterless, mud-filled canal that collapsed weeks earlier, in a delicate, multi-million-pound rescue operation.
From Barron's ● Feb. 11, 2026
Her breath made the glass misty, and so did Marly’s, so everything had a kind of mysterious fog around it.
From "Miracles on Maple Hill" by Virginia Sorensen
Like a lot of farmers, 54-year-old Graham Wilson from Dylife in Powys juggles a few different businesses, one of which involves heading up into the mistier fields and forests, whatever the weather.
From BBC ● Mar. 8, 2026
Gray and damp at 10 a.m., it proved grayer, mistier and wetter at 6 p.m.
From Washington Post ● Mar. 10, 2023
But this version of “The Visit” has another dimension, too, a mistier one that exalts the notion of deathless love.
From New York Times ● Apr. 23, 2015
The “twilight” of the exhibition’s title has as much to do with the mistier regions of consciousness as with the borderlands of real-world time and space.
From New York Times ● Mar. 11, 2010
From this point it grows, if not wilder in words, still mistier in build of limb and shape of feature.
From William Blake A Critical Essay by Algernon Charles Swinburne
“I think we will leave the lesson here for today,” said Professor Trelawney in her mistiest voice.
From "Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban" by J.K. Rowling
It stood for human war and human courage and human deeds from the mistiest past, and behind it must be a weight of human wrath, feats, and tradition that must make even the Snake pause.
From Snake and Sword A Novel by Percival Christopher Wren
It was the mistiest spot I ever visited.
From Franz Liszt by James Huneker
"I imagine great strength is needed for hunting bears," observed Alexey Alexandrovitch, who had the mistiest notions about the chase.
From Anna Karenina by Constance Garnett
It was as picturesque as Battersea in Whistler's mistiest days.
From Shandygaff by Christopher Morley
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.
