misfire

Etymology

Either a univerbation of earlier miss fire, or the compound mis- + fire (or possibly a confluence of both).

noun

  1. An act of misfiring.
  2. (figurative) A failure.
    Amazon’s misfires with Alexa may have led Google astray, said a former manager who worked on Google Assistant. 2023-03-15, Brian X. Chen, Nico Grant, Karen Weise, “How Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant Lost the A.I. Race”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

verb

  1. (firearms) To fail to discharge properly.
  2. (of an engine) To fail to ignite in the proper sequence.
  3. (by extension) To fail to achieve the anticipated result.
    His practical joke misfired and he nearly burnt my left hand.

Attribution / Disclaimer All definitions come directly from Wiktionary using the Wiktextract library. We do not edit or curate the definitions for any words, if you feel the definition listed is incorrect or offensive please suggest modifications directly to the source (wiktionary/misfire), any changes made to the source will update on this page periodically.