Word
mistaken
Phoneticsmis·tak·en
US/mɪˈsteɪkən/
UK/mɪstˈeɪkən/
Definitions
01wrong about something
adj. wrong in what you believe or think.
adj. holding an incorrect belief or opinion; often used in the phrase 'to be mistaken'.
“If you think the meeting is today, you are mistaken; it is actually tomorrow.”
“I was initially mistaken about his intentions, but his subsequent actions proved that he was genuinely trying to help the team.”
Usage
Commonly follows the verb 'to be' or 'to find oneself'.
Pitfall
I am mistaken about the date.
I was mistaken about the date.
While you can be 'mistaken' in the present, we usually use the past tense to describe the moment we realized our error.
02incorrect or erroneous
adj. based on a wrong idea or fact.
adj. characterised by error; based on a false premise or incorrect information.
“The police released the man after a case of mistaken identity.”
“The theory was based on a mistaken assumption that the market would remain stable despite the political unrest.”
Usage
Often used to modify nouns like 'identity', 'belief', or 'assumption'.
Synonyms
Etymology
Morphologically mistake + -n.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Collocations
Word family
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/mistaken