This week’s theme
Misleading words

This week’s words
antipelargy
misdoubt


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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(mis-DAUT)

MEANING:

verb tr.: To doubt or suspect.
verb intr.: To have doubts.
noun: Doubt or suspicion.

ETYMOLOGY:

From mis- + doubt, from Old French doter (to doubt or fear), from Latin dubitare (to doubt or hesitate). The doubt element is ultimately from the Indo-European root dwo- (two), which also gave us dual, double, dubious, doubt, diploma, twin, between, and didymous (occurring in pairs). Earliest documented use: 1530s.

NOTES:

Usually, the prefix mis- indicates that something is wrong: to misspell a word is to spell it incorrectly. In a few older formations, however, mis- could reinforce a verb that already expressed a negative feeling, as in today’s word. Misdoubt means “to doubt” or “to suspect”, not “to doubt incorrectly”. If you expected the latter, you missed out.

In Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well, after the Countess’s steward confirms that Helen, a gentlewoman in the Countess’s household, loves her son, Bertram, the Countess says, “I could neither believe nor misdoubt.”

USAGE:

“’Listen to that, Mother Bullock. She’s the same age as me.’
‘I’d have guessed she was older,’ Mother Bullock said, which I misdoubt was a compliment to me.”
Sandra Dallas; Alice’s Tulips; St. Martin’s Press; 2007.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: