Noun
misnomer (plural misnomers)
- 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: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.
- 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.
- A term whose sense in common usage conflicts with a technical sense.
- (proscribed, nonstandard) something asserted not to be true; a myth or mistaken belief
It's a misnomer that engineers can't write.
Translations
use of term that is misleading
- Chinese:
- Mandarin: please add this translation if you can
- Dutch: verkeerde naam
- Finnish: harhaanjohtava (fi) (adjective; often used in partitive)
- German: Fehlbenennung f, Fehlbezeichnung f, Namensirrtum m
- Greek: ακυριολεξία (el) f (akyriolexía)
- Hungarian: helytelen/téves/hibás megnevezés/elnevezés/név, (less common) névhiba, névtévesztés, névcsere (hu), (“mistake”) tévedés (hu)
- Icelandic: rangnefni n
- Spanish: nombre inapropiado m, nombre improprio m
- Turkish: yanlış adlandırma, uygunsuz adlandırma
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term whose sense in common usage conflicts with a technical sense
Translations to be checked