Wiktionary

miss

See also: Miss, miß, Miß, miss-, miß-, and Miss.

English

edit

Pronunciation

edit

Etymology 1

edit

Verb from Middle English missen, from Old English missan (“to miss, escape the notice of a person”), from Proto-West Germanic *missijan, from Proto-Germanic *missijaną (“to miss, go wrong, fail”), from Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- (“to change, exchange, trade”). Cognate with West Frisian misse (“to miss”), Dutch missen (“to miss”), German missen (“to miss”), Norwegian Bokmål and Danish miste (“to lose”), Swedish missa (“to miss”), Norwegian Nynorsk and Icelandic missa (“to lose”).

Noun from Middle English misse, mis, from Old English miss (“loss, absence”), from Proto-West Germanic *miss, from Proto-Germanic *miss- (“loss”). Cognate with Scots miss (“a loss, want, cause of grief or mourning”), Middle High German misse, mis (“lack, missing, absence”), Icelandic missir (“loss”). Related also to Scots mis (“wrongdoing, sin, guilt”), Dutch mis (“misdeed, wrongdoing, mistake”), Middle Low German misse (“sin, wrong”).

Verb

edit

miss (third-person singular simple present misses, present participle missing, simple past and past participle missed)

  2. (ambitransitive, physical) To fail to hit, catch, grasp, etc.
    I fired the gun, but the bullet missed the target.
    I tried to kick the ball, but missed.
    She tried to grab hold of the end of the rope, but she missed.
    • 1627 (indicated as 1626), Francis [Bacon], “(please specify the page, or |century=I to X)”, in Sylua Syluarum: Or A Naturall Historie. In Ten Centuries. […], London: […] William Rawley […]; [p]rinted by J[ohn] H[aviland] for William Lee […], →OCLC:
      Men observe when things hit, and not when they miss.
    • 1666, Edmund Waller, "Instructions to a Painter:
      Flying bullets now,
      To execute his rage, appear too slow;
      They miss, or sweep but common souls away.
  3. (ambitransitive, physical) To avoid hitting.
    The driver swerved and just managed to miss the chicken crossing the road.
  5. (transitive) To fail to achieve or attain.
    The company missed all its sales targets.
  7. (transitive) To fail to experience, attend, partake, take advantage of, etc.
    Joe missed the meeting this morning.
    I usually watch the Oscars Ceremonies, but I missed it this year.
    I'm starving! I missed breakfast this morning.
    I only left the queue for a moment and now I've missed my turn.
    This offer is too good to miss.
    to miss an opportunity, to miss a chance
  9. (transitive) To avoid or escape.
    The car just missed hitting a passer-by.
    We missed disaster by the skin of our teeth.
  11. (transitive) To become aware of the loss or absence of; to feel the want or need of, sometimes with regret.
    I miss you! Come home soon!
    I miss going for walks along the beach.
    I'm not going to the party, but I don't think I'll be missed.
  13. (transitive) To fail to understand.
    Antonym: catch
    to miss the joke
  15. (transitive) To fail to notice; to have a shortcoming of perception; overlook.
    So I'm just going over my early notes, see if I missed anything.
  17. (transitive) To be too late to connect with or meet something or someone (a means of transportation, a deadline, etc.).
    I missed the plane!
    "Is Polly still here?" — "No, sorry, you've just missed her. She left a couple of minutes ago."
    • 2025 March 5, “Ayr miles with a 'Spirit of Scotland'”, in RAIL, number 1030, page 45:
      And we can't afford to miss the train back, as the next one is at 0704 tomorrow...
  19. (transitive, mostly continuous tenses) To be wanting; to lack something that should be present (see also adjectival missing).
    The car is missing essential features.
    This jigsaw is missing several pieces.
  20. (transitive, slang) To spare someone of something unwanted or undesirable.
    Miss me with that nonsense!
  21. (poker, said of a card) To fail to help the hand of a player.
    Player A: J7. Player B: Q6. Table: 283. The flop missed both players!
  22. (sports) To fail to score (a goal).
    • 2011 September 18, Ben Dirs, “Rugby World Cup 2011: England 41-10 Georgia”, in BBC Sport:
      Georgia, ranked 16th in the world, dominated the breakdown before half-time and forced England into a host of infringements, but fly-half Merab Kvirikashvili missed three penalties.
  23. (intransitive, obsolete) To go wrong; to err.
  24. (intransitive, obsolete) To be absent, deficient, or wanting.
Usage notes
edit
Antonyms
edit
Derived terms
edit
Descendants
edit
  • → Kashubian: zmisowac (Canada, United States)
Translations
edit

Noun

edit

miss (plural misses)

  1. A failure to physically hit.
    In eight shots at the target he had six misses.
    • 1886, Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, translated by H.L. Brækstad, Folk and Fairy Tales, page 76:
      "I ran from one place to another, and as it was not difficult to get a shot at him, I fired several times, but only made miss after miss."
  2. A failure to obtain or accomplish something; a failure to succeed.
    After four top-ten singles, the band's next release was a miss.
    Your answer isn't exactly right, but it's a very close miss.
    Jones put the penalty shot over the bar — what a terrible miss.
  3. An act of avoidance (usually used with the verb give).
    I think I’ll give the meeting a miss.
  4. (informal) Someone or something whose loss or absence is felt.
    Top striker Smith is out injured and will be a big miss for United.
  5. (computing) The situation where an item is not found in a cache and therefore needs to be explicitly loaded.
    • 1999, Proceedings of the Third Symposium on Operating Systems:
      Already we're seeing fewer cache misses by avoiding creating cache entries for the idle task and expect to see even fewer with changes to the TLB reload code to uncache the page tables.
  6. (snooker) A foul shot that fails to hit the target ball, where the player has, in the referee's judgement, not made every effort to play a legal shot; in addition to conceding points for the foul, the player can be made to play the shot again.
  7. (obsolete) Error, fault; misdeed, wrongdoing, sin.
  8. (obsolete) Hurt or harm from a mistake or accident.
  9. (obsolete) Loss, lack want; hence, the feeling of loss.
Derived terms
edit
Translations
edit

Etymology 2

edit

From mistress.

Alternative forms

edit

Noun

edit
 
English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia

miss (countable and uncountable, plural misses)

  1. A title of respect for a young woman (usually unmarried) with or without a name used.
    You may sit here, miss.
    You may sit here, Miss Jones.
  2. A term of address by a student for a female teacher.
    Coordinate term: sir
    Here's my report, miss.
  3. An unmarried woman; a girl.
    • 1771, James Cawthorn, Poems, by the Rev. Mr. Cawthorn, Late Master of Tunbridge School‎[1]:
      While thus the fiends, with wily art, Adroitly stole upon the heart, And with their complaisance, and tales, Had ruind more than half the males, Gay Vanity, with smiles, and kisses, Was busy 'mongst the maids, and misses.
  4. A kept woman; a mistress.
  5. (card games) In the game of three-card loo, an extra hand, dealt on the table, which may be substituted for the hand dealt to a player.
Coordinate terms
edit
Derived terms
edit
edit
Translations
edit

Anagrams

edit

Catalan

edit

Etymology

edit

Borrowed from English miss.

Pronunciation

edit

Noun

edit

miss f (plural misses)

  1. beauty queen

Dutch

edit

Etymology 1

edit

From English miss.

Pronunciation

edit

Noun

edit

miss f (plural missen, diminutive missje n)

  1. a winner of a beauty contest
    Annelien Coorevits was Miss België in 2007.
    Annelien Coorevits was Miss Belgium in 2007.
  2. a beauty
  3. a girl with a high self-esteem
    Dat is nogal een miss, hoor.
    She has some air.

Etymology 2

edit

See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.

Alternative forms

edit

Adverb

edit

miss

  1. (Internet slang, text messaging) Abbreviation of misschien (“maybe”).

German

edit

Alternative forms

edit

Pronunciation

edit

Verb

edit

miss

  1. singular imperative of messen

Maltese

edit

Pronunciation

edit

Verb

edit

miss

  1. second-person singular imperative of mess

Norwegian Nynorsk

edit

Verb

edit

miss

  1. imperative of missa

Old English

edit

Alternative forms

edit
  • mis — late Old English

Etymology

edit

From Proto-West Germanic *miss, from Proto-Germanic *miss- (“loss, want”), from Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂- (“to change, replace”). Cognate with Old Norse missir, missa (“loss”).

Pronunciation

edit

Noun

edit

miss n

  1. loss

Declension

edit

Strong a-stem:

singular plural
nominative miss miss
accusative miss miss
genitive misses missa
dative misse missum
edit

Descendants

edit

Polish

edit

Etymology

edit

Unadapted borrowing from English miss.

Pronunciation

edit

Noun

edit

miss f (indeclinable)

  1. beauty queen

Further reading

edit
  • miss in Wielki słownik języka polskiego, Instytut Języka Polskiego PAN
  • miss in Polish dictionaries at PWN

Romanian

edit

Etymology

edit

Unadapted borrowing from English miss.

Noun

edit

miss f (plural miss)

  1. miss (title)

Spanish

edit

Etymology

edit

Unadapted borrowing from English miss.

Pronunciation

edit

Noun

edit

miss f (plural misses, masculine míster, masculine plural místeres)

  1. Miss, beauty queen (winner in a female beauty contest)

Usage notes

edit

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

Further reading

edit

Anagrams

edit

Swedish

edit

Pronunciation

edit

Etymology 1

edit

Related to the verb missa. This etymology is incomplete. You can help Wiktionary by elaborating on the origins of this term. Also from English miss?.

Noun

edit

miss c

  1. a miss (failure to hit)
    Synonym: bom
    Var det en träff eller en miss?
    Was it a hit or a miss?
  2. a mistake
    Synonym: misstag
    Jag gjorde en miss
    I made a mistake
    en rejäl miss
    a big mistake / a huge blunder
Declension
edit
Declension of miss
nominative genitive
singular indefinite miss miss
definite missen missens
plural indefinite missar missars
definite missarna missarnas

Etymology 2

edit

Borrowed from English miss.

Noun

edit

miss c

  1. Miss ((title for an) unmarried woman (in English-speaking countries))
    Synonym: (native) fröken
  2. a Miss ((title for a) female participant in or winner of a beauty pageant or beauty contest)
    Synonyms: skönhetsmiss, (sometimes, for Swedish contests) fröken
    Miss Hawaii gick vidare till att vinna Miss America-tävlingen
    Miss Hawaii went on to win the Miss America contest
    • 1964, Thore Skogman, “Fröken Fräken [Miss Freckle]”‎[2]performed by Sven-Ingvars:
      Jag har sett miss Grekland. Jag har sett miss Kina. Nästan alla världens vackra misser har jag mött. Och jag tyckte alla, sköna var och fina. Men när jag kom hem till Värmland mötte jag en Värmlandsjänta, och hon är för mig det allra sötaste bland sött. Lilla söta fröken Fräken ifrån Fryken blev miss Värmland nu i år. Alla Värmlandspulsar slår när hon genom staden går. Lilla söta fröken Fräken ifrån Fryken, hon är blond som ängens råg. Vackrast utav alla flickorna jag såg.
      I have seen Miss Greece. I have seen Miss China. I have met almost every beautiful Miss in the world [almost all the world's beautiful Misses have I met]. And I thought all of them were beautiful and pretty. But when I came home to Värmland, I met a Värmland gal, and she is to me the very cutest among cute. Cute little Miss Freckle from Fryken became Miss Värmland [now] this year. All the Värmland pulses beat when she walks through the city. Cute little Miss Freckle from Fryken, she is blonde like the rye of the meadow. The most beautiful of all the girls I saw.
Declension
edit
Declension of miss
nominative genitive
singular indefinite miss miss
definite missen missens
plural indefinite misser missers
definite misserna missernas
See also
edit

Etymology 3

edit

Onomatopoeic

Interjection

edit

miss

  1. (rare) Used to call a cat.
    Synonym: kiss
Derived terms
edit

References

edit
Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=miss&oldid=84557908"