Other forms: missing, missed, misses
To miss is to fail to hit, catch or reach something. The ball goes wide of the goal, your hand closes on air, the bus pulls out as you get to the stop.
The second big meaning has nothing to do with failing: to miss someone is to feel their absence and be sad about it — I miss you, she misses her old school. Then there is missing what you meant to attend or notice: miss a lesson, miss a flight, miss the point, miss a mistake on the front page. Miss out means to leave something out; miss out on means to lose your chance at it. As a noun, a miss is a shot that failed, a near miss is one that came very close, and to give something a miss is British for deciding not to bother. Capital-M Miss is separate: a title for a woman, said before her surname.
1verbmissTo fail to hit, catch or reach something.
“He shot at the target and missed by a metre.”
2verbfeelTo feel sad because someone or something is not with you.
“She misses her brother now that he lives abroad.”
3verbsomewhereTo fail to be somewhere in time, or to fail to attend.
“We missed the last train and had to walk home.”
4verboverlookTo fail to notice or to understand something.
“You have missed the most important line in the letter.”
synonyms: overlook
5nounattemptA failed attempt to hit or catch something.
“It was a miss, but only just.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Miss is Old English missan, to miss or to escape a person's notice, from Proto-Germanic missijaną — to miss, to go wrong, to fail. Further back sits a Proto-Indo-European root meyth₂-, to change or exchange. The idea underneath is a swap: what you got is not what you aimed at.
Proto-Indo-European
*meyth₂- — to change, exchange, trade
Proto-Germanic
*missijaną — to miss, go wrong, fail
Proto-West Germanic
*missijan
Old English
missan — to miss, escape the notice of a person
Middle English
missen
English, today
miss
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 -, Icelandic missa (“to lose”) and Latin mittere (“to send, let go”). 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”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA