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misleading

UK/(ˌ)mɪsˈliːdɪŋ/US/(ˌ)mɪsˈliːdɪŋ/
adjectiveC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #8,931 of 15,258leans written

Misleading means giving an impression that is not the true one. A misleading headline, misleading advertising, deeply misleading.

It is the word for a statement that is technically true and still deceives, which is what makes it more useful than false. Advertising law prohibits misleading claims without requiring them to be outright lies.

Definitions of misleading

  1. 1adjectivemisleadingGiving an impression that is not the true one.C1

    “The advert was misleading, as the hotel was nowhere near the beach.”

misleading is a quality.

Where it comes from

From mislead + -ing.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

misleading in the wild

  • Statistics, when used in a misleading fashion, can trick the casual observer into believing something other than what the data shows.

    Misuse of statistics

  • One of the first authors to write about misleading graphs was Darrell Huff, publisher of the 1954 book How to Lie with Statistics.

    Misleading graph

  • During and between his terms as president of the United States, Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims.

    False or misleading statements by Donald Trump

  • Fact-checkers at The Washington Post documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term, an average of 21 per day.

    False or misleading statements by Donald Trump

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.