Dictionary

misally en · VERB

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *mey-? Proto-Indo-European *meyth₂-der. Proto-Germanic *missaz Proto-Germanic *missa- Proto-West Germanic *missa- Old English mis- Middle English mys- English mis- English ally English misally From mis- + ally.

Meanings

1. (rare) To 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. (dated, historical) To marry badly; to marry an inferior
   • 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:
   • 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:

Forms

Translations (2)

de mesalliieren (marry beneath one's station) · fr mésallier (marry beneath one's station)