mistaking

Pluralmistakings

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle and gerund of mistake.

   Mistaking the address, she knocked on the wrong door.

   He kept mistaking her polite silence for full agreement.

   Note

   The -ing form does double duty. In "she was mistaking him for his brother" it builds the progressive, and in "mistaking the address cost her an hour" it is a gerund that still takes a direct object. Its most common pattern is mistake X for Y. The silent e of mistake drops, as in taking, and the same spelling once served as the old noun for an error, which even had a plural.

2. 2
   nounobsolete

   An error or blunder; a mistake in thought or action.

   Now, that you may escape general mistaking in the election of your Bow, I will giue you some Rules and Notions, which if you forget not, shall preuent many mistakings.

   1634, Gervase Markham, The Art of Archerie

   Note

   A noun from Shakespeare's era that modern English has replaced with plain mistake. It could be counted: The Tempest has "made thee no mistakings," and Gervase Markham's The Art of Archerie (1634) warns of "many mistakings." It could also stand as a mass noun, as in Markham's "general mistaking." Today it reads as deliberate period color, so in ordinary prose write mistake or error.

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