misleading
part of speech
adjective (misleading; more misleading, most misleading); verb form (present participle of mislead: mislead, misleads, misled, misleading)
meaning for a pupil
1) Giving people a wrong idea, even if not every word is a lie. tree →
2) (verb form) Leading someone the wrong way or making them believe something false. tree →
sense in the lessons
In maths and science a misleading graph or question makes you think the numbers say something they do not, for example a bar chart whose scale does not start at zero. In everyday life and safety it warns about adverts, headlines and online posts that trick people. Phrases: misleading information, a misleading headline, misleading advert, be misleading.
examples
- Tzaddi is properly Tz ; but some write Z only, which is misleading because the Hebrew has also a true Z, Zain. (Sefer Yetzirah, Westcott 1893) tree →
- The advert was misleading because the toy was much smaller than in the picture. tree →
- That graph is misleading: the bars start at 50, not at 0. tree →
- It is misleading to say the test was easy when half the class failed. tree →
- He gave the teacher a misleading answer about his homework. tree →
- Some headlines online are misleading, so check the full story. tree →
- The sign was misleading and sent us down the wrong path. tree →
- You are misleading everyone by leaving out the cost of postage. tree →
note
It is an adjective here, not a noun: a misleading claim. Past of mislead is misled (not «misleaded»). Misleading is not quite the same as lying: the words can be true but leave a false picture. In maths problems a misleading detail is an extra number that is not needed; spot it and leave it out.
In the corpora
- Headlines are written to make you click and can be misleading, so read beyond them and check other sources.
- Headlines are written to make you click and can be misleading, so read beyond the headline.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «misleading» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.