misleading

Pluralmisleadings

1. 1
   adjective

   Tending to give a false impression or deceive, even when a statement is technically accurate.

   Like a magician's patter: every word may be true, yet it steers you toward the wrong conclusion.

   The label is misleading: it implies the drink is sugar-free when it merely has less sugar.

   The brochure's photographs were deeply misleading about the size of the rooms.

   Similarconfusing

   Oppositeclear

   Note

   A participle that has settled into an adjective, built from mislead plus -ing. The surest sign is that it takes degree: more misleading, most misleading. It describes things as well as statements, as when Arthur Stanley Eddington wrote in 1926 that a problem looks less hopeless once misleading metaphor is discarded. Its everyday opposite is clear. Unmisleading also exists.

2. 2
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of mislead.

   The spokesperson was misleading reporters about the company's finances.

   Misleading investors is treated as a serious offense.

   Note

   Here the word is still fully a verb, so it takes a direct object: misleading reporters, misleading investors. That object is the easiest way to tell it from the adjective, which grades instead (more misleading). After be it forms the progressive. As a gerund it can stand as a subject. It covers the whole range of mislead, from literally leading someone astray to confusing them by accident.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   An act of deception that leads someone to a false belief.

   Like a decoy set out to draw you away from the truth.

   The pamphlet was a calculated misleading designed to sway voters.

   What looked like an honest mistake was actually a deliberate misleading of the shareholders.

   Similarruse, ploy, disinformation, misinformation

   Note

   A countable noun with an ordinary plural, misleadings, naming a single act rather than a general quality. It earns its place where deception is being sorted into kinds. Jennifer Mather Saul's Lying, Misleading, and What is Said (2012) sets mere misleadings against lies and asks whether the first are morally better. That is the useful contrast: a misleading need not say anything false.

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