mistakenly

English

Etymology

Etymology tree

English mistaken

Proto-Indo-European *leyg-

Proto-Germanic *līkąder.

Proto-Germanic *-līkaz

Proto-Germanic *-ê

Proto-Germanic *-līkê

Old English -līċe

Middle English -ly

English -ly

English mistakenly

From mistaken + -ly.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /mɪˈsteɪ.kən.li/

• Audio (Midwestern US):

  (file)

Adverb

mistakenly (not comparable)

1. Wrongly; erroneously.

   I mistakenly assumed that the shop was still there.

   • 2017 June 3, Jamie Koufman, “The Specialists’ Stranglehold on Medicine”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:

     Most Americans mistakenly believe that they must see specialists for almost every medical problem.

   • 2025 April 8, Hanna Park, “A timeline of the legal battle over the mistaken deportation of a Maryland father to El Salvador”, in CNN‎^[2]:

     The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily paused a lower court-ordered deadline to return to the US a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, granting the Trump administration additional time to review the case.

2. By accident; by mistake; in error (without intention to do so).

   Today I mistakenly took your packed lunch to work.

Related terms

• mistake
• mistaken
• mistakingly
• mistook

Translations

wrongly

• Azerbaijani: yanlış, səhvən
• Esperanto: erare
• Finnish: virheellisesti (fi)
• French: à tort (fr)
• German: irrtümlich (de)
• Greek: εσφαλμένα (el) (esfalména), λανθασμένα (el) (lanthasména)
• Hungarian: tévesen (hu)
• Polish: błędnie (pl)
• Tamil: தவறாக (ta) (tavaṟāka), தப்பாக (tappāka)

by accident

• Arabic: خَطَأً (ḵaṭaʔan)
• Azerbaijani: səhvən
• Chichewa: mwatsoka
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 錯誤地 / 错误地 (zh) (cuòwù de)

• Finnish: vahingossa (fi), erehdyksessä
• French: par erreur (fr), à tort (fr), sans faire exprès
• German: aus Versehen, versehentlich (de)
• Greek: κατά λάθος (el) (katá láthos)
• Hungarian: tévedésből
• Italian: erroneamente (it)
• Japanese: 誤って (あやまって, ayamatte)
• Polish: przez pomyłkę
• Portuguese: erradamente, equivocadamente, erroneamente
• Russian: оши́бочно (ru) (ošíbočno), по оши́бке (po ošíbke)
• Spanish: equivocadamente (es), erróneamente (es), erradamente, sin querer (es), por error, por equivocación
• Tamil: தவறாக (ta) (tavaṟāka), தவறுதலாக (tavaṟutalāka)
• Turkish: yanlışlıkla (tr)
• Urdu: غلطی سے (ġalatī sē)