How to spell mislead

hear itmis·lead/mɪs'lid/verbPrefixes and work

What it means: To cause someone to believe something untrue.

In a sentence: The tricky map may mislead the treasure hunters.

The part people get wrong

Often misspelled as milslead or misslead.

Same family: misleading, misled, leader, leadership, guide. If you can spell one, the shared part carries to the others.

Where it comes from: “Mislead” comes from Old English roots: the prefix “mis-” meaning ‘wrongly’ and “lead,” meaning ‘to guide,’ so it literally means ‘to guide in the wrong way.’ Interestingly, the past tense “misled” is often misread as ‘mis-led’ instead of its correct pronunciation /ˈmɪslɛd/.

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Words like this

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