amiss
/əˈmɪs
/adjective [predicative]
Not quite right; inappropriate or out of place: there was something amiss about his calculations...
- I felt like myself yet there was something wrong, something amiss, something lacking from the scene.
- At this point the store manager, who was taking stock nearby, sensed that there was something amiss at the till and walked over.
- If something amiss is detected, the camera alerts a central control.
Synonyms
wrong, awry, faulty, out of order, defective, unsatisfactory, incorrect, untoward, adrift, astray, inappropriate, improper, unsuitable
adverb
Wrongly or inappropriately: the prime minister may have constructed his cabinet a little amiss...
- What goes amiss in the smoker's crusade to defend themselves is the rights of the people who don't want to be subjected to smoke.
- Obviously little would need to go amiss for the financial plan to go awry.
- The Fijian way of life is glorified as the kind of life where people look after you if anything goes amiss.
Phrases
take something amiss
something would not go (or come) amiss
Origin
Middle English: probably from Old Norse á mis 'so as to miss', from á 'on' + mis (related to miss1).
Rhymes
- postscripted
- post scriptum
- postscutellum
- postseason
- post-secondary
- post-selection
- post ship
- post shop
- post-sitter
- post-sixteen
- post-Soviet
- postsphenoid
- postsphenoidal
- post-stage
- post-Stalin
- post-Stalinist
- post station
- poststernal
- post-structural
- post-structuralism
- post-structuralist
- postsylvian
- postsynapsis
- postsynaptic
- postsynaptically