misally

M3I1S1A1L1L1Y4

verb

To wrongly join together; to wrongly ally with or to.

Scrabble 12

Meanings

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

present singular third person misallies · participle present misallying · participle past misallied · past misallied

  1. rareTo wrongly join together; to wrongly ally with or to.

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

    1861, C. J. Hempel, Friedrich Schiller, Complete Works. Ed. with Careful Rev. and New Tr., page 423
  2. datedhistoricalTo marry badly; to marry an inferior

    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.

    1845, Charles Jared Ingersoll, History of the second war between the United States of America and Great Britain, page 278
    1 more example

    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 ...

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

Origin

  1. Proto-Indo-European*mey-?
  2. Proto-Indo-European*meyth₂-
  3. Proto-Germanic*missaz
  4. Proto-Germanic*missa-
  5. Proto-West Germanic*missa-
  6. Old Englishmis-
  7. Middle Englishmys-
  8. Englishmis-
  9. Englishally
  10. Englishmisally

From mis- + ally.

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

French mésallier
  • mésalliermarry beneath one's station
German mesalliieren
  • mesalliierenmarry beneath one's station
Cite this entry
APA

misally. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/misally

MLA

“misally.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/misally. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “misally,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/misally.

Source: misally on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.