misnomer

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English

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 misnomer on Wikipedia
Examples
  • chickenpox: it has nothing to do with chickens, and is not a pox (i.e. poxvirus).
  • crabeater seal: it eats krill, not crabs.
  • fisher (Mustelid, Pekania pennanti): it does not eat fish.
  • Greenland and Iceland: Iceland is much greener, and less icy, than Greenland.
  • prairie dog: it is a squirrel, so not closely related to dogs.

Etymology

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From Middle English misnoumer, from Anglo-Norman mesnomer, noun use of Anglo-Norman and Old French verb mesnomer (to name incorrectly), from mes- (mis-) + nomer (to name) (from Latin nōmināre).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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misnomer (plural misnomers)

  1. A use of a term that is misleading; a misname.
    Synonym: misname
    Calling it a driveway is a bit of a misnomer, since you don't drive on it, you park on it.
    • 2020 February 25, Christopher de Bellaigue, “The end of farming?”, in The Guardian[1]:
      Rewilding [] is also a misnomer, for whether by getting rid of tens of thousands of sheep in Patagonia or introducing a living species as a surrogate for an extinct one – Sayaguesa cattle in place of aurochs in Croatia’s Velebit Mountains, for instance – rewilding requires more human intervention than its name suggests.
    • 1994, Illinois. Appellate Court, Stephen Davis Porter, Illinois Appellate reports, page 257:
      [] plaintiff's misstyling himself as corporation in initial complaint constituted case of misnomer.
  2. A term that is misleading, even if it may not be incorrect.
    The name Chinese checkers is a misnomer since the game has nothing to do with China.
    The word blackboard as applied to green or brown chalkboards is a misnomer but is not incorrect, as the broad sense of the word is idiomatic.
  3. A term whose sense in common usage conflicts with a technical sense.
  4. (proscribed, nonstandard) something asserted not to be true; a myth or mistaken belief
    It's a misnomer that engineers can't write.

Antonyms

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Translations

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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

See also

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Verb

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misnomer (third-person singular simple present misnomers, present participle misnomering, simple past and past participle misnomered)

  1. (transitive) To use a misleading term; to misname.

References

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Anagrams

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