misnomer

From Middle English misnoumer, from Anglo-Norman mesnomer, noun use of Anglo-Norman and Old French verb mesnomer (“to name incorrectly”), from mes- (“mis-”) + nomer (“to name”) (from Latin nōmināre).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /mɪsˈnəʊmə/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /mɪsˈnoʊmɚ/

• Audio (US)

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• Rhymes: -əʊmə(ɹ)

misnomer (plural misnomers)

1. A use of a term that is misleading; a misname.

   Synonym: misname

   Calling it a driveway is a bit of a misnomer, since you don't drive on it, you park on it.

   • 2020 February 25, Christopher de Bellaigue, “The end of farming?”, in The Guardian‎:

     Rewilding […] is also a misnomer, for whether by getting rid of tens of thousands of sheep in Patagonia or introducing a living species as a surrogate for an extinct one – Sayaguesa cattle in place of aurochs in Croatia’s Velebit Mountains, for instance – rewilding requires more human intervention than its name suggests.

   • 1994, Illinois. Appellate Court, Stephen Davis Porter, Illinois Appellate reports, page 257:

     […] plaintiff's misstyling himself as corporation in initial complaint constituted case of misnomer.

2. A term that is misleading, even if it may not be incorrect.

   The name Chinese checkers is a misnomer since the game has nothing to do with China.

   The word blackboard as applied to green or brown chalkboards is a misnomer but is not incorrect, as the broad sense of the word is idiomatic.

3. A term whose sense in common usage conflicts with a technical sense.
4. (proscribed, nonstandard) something asserted not to be true; a myth or mistaken belief

   It's a misnomer that engineers can't write.

• aptronym

• catachresis

misnomer (third-person singular simple present misnomers, present participle misnomering, simple past and past participle misnomered)

1. (transitive) To use a misleading term; to misname.

• “misnomer”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.

• semi-norm, seminorm