misally

English

Etymology

mis- +‎ ally

Verb

misally (third-person singular simple present misallies, present participle misallying, simple past and past participle misallied)

1. (rare) To wrongly join together; to wrongly ally with or to.
   • 1861, C. J. Hempel, Friedrich Schiller, Complete Works. Ed. with Careful Rev. and New Tr., page 423:

     'Tis my beliefwhen, things are misallied,
     The sooner they part company the better.

2. (now dated or historical) To marry badly; to marry an inferior
   • 1845, Charles Jared Ingersoll, History of the second war between the United States of America and Great Britain, page 278:

     Despotism, ... misled him to place nearly all his family on thrones, ... and misally himself with a foreign princess, whose family and country were his unappeasable enemies.

   • 1996, Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods, Univ of California Press, →ISBN, page 240:

     If whites were threatened with moral deformation when they misallied with blacks, and even risked transmitting not only darkened skin, but black blood “that would attack in France the very heart of the nation,” blacks also found ...

Translations

marry beneath one's station

• French: mésallier (fr)
• German: mesalliieren (de)

References

• Webster's New World Dictionary (Second College Edition)

Anagrams

• Millays