mistook
- 1Past tense of mistake.
I mistook her silence for agreement and kept talking.
The hikers mistook the trail marker and wandered off course.
Note
The past that stands on its own, with no helper verb: I mistook, they mistook. It follows the pattern of take, took, taken. Its usual construction pairs it with for: you mistake one thing or person for another, such as a stranger for a friend or silence for agreement. Once an auxiliary appears, the standard form is mistaken: had mistaken, was mistaken.
- 2Past participle of mistake. Nonstandard; the standard past participle is mistaken.
He had mistook the instructions and assembled the shelf upside down.
They had mistook our intentions from the very beginning.
Note
Here the simple-past form takes over the participle's job: had mistook in place of had mistaken. The usage belongs to casual, nonstandard speech, and in edited prose it reads as a slip. Use it when you are deliberately writing a speaking voice, such as dialogue or a relaxed first-person narrator. Elsewhere, keep the plain past for sentences without an auxiliary, and use mistaken after have or be.
mistook is a form of mistake
mistake, verb: To wrongly understand one person or thing to be another. Full entry
- Spelling
- mistake → mistook: irregular (no -ed)
Use it in a sentence
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