misrecognition.

The failure to recognize something correctly, often by taking it for something else.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• a moment of misrecognition
• an act of misrecognition
• misrecognition of a face

On the page

For a moment of misrecognition, the woman at the window was unmistakably his mother.

The scene turned on a misrecognition so ordinary that no one thought to question it.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror. Forms: Usually uncountable; plural misrecognitions for separate errors. Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1 only. Use numbered sense fields for all meanings.