miscalculation

nounB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #10,915 of 15,258neutral

Other forms: miscalculations

A miscalculation is a mistake in working something out. A serious miscalculation.

It is used of judgement as often as of arithmetic, which is where the interesting ones are. A political miscalculation is usually about how other people will react.

Definitions of miscalculation

1nounmiscalculationA mistake in working something out.B2+
“One miscalculation in the second week cost the whole quarter.”

miscalculation is a mistake.

Where it comes from

Latin
calculatio
Middle English
calculation
English
calculation
English, today
miscalculation

From mis- + calculation. calculation comes from Middle English calculation, borrowed from Latin calculatio. Morphologically calculate + ion.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

miscalculation in the wild

To botch in professional wrestling means to fail in attempting a scripted move or spoken line by mistake, miscalculation, or an error in judgment.
Botch (professional wrestling)
Due to a scoring miscalculation, Thomas Hamilton-Brown was eliminated until the error was discovered several days later.
Carlos Lillo
In 2003, the roof collapsed, as a result of a miscalculation in design and the new roof was reinforced with cables.
Ballerup Super Arena
Furthermore, a miscalculation caused by a change in finishing location resulted in a course of only 35 km (over 5 km short of the true marathon distance).
Athletics at the 2010 South Asian Games

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the calculatio family

calculation miscalculation

miscalculation — used about once every 7,462 pages · #10,915 · point at the bar for the others

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