MEANING
To fail to understand the main idea, purpose, or important issue in something.
Use it for
criticizing a response that overlooks the central issue; distinguishing an irrelevant answer from a relevant disagreement; explaining why a technically correct comment is unhelpful; redirecting a discussion to its actual purposeDistinguishes failing to grasp what matters from merely disagreeing with a conclusion. Writing functions: Understanding / Central issue. Semantic categories (by meaning): Understanding / Central issue. Contexts: General conversation; Creative prose.
Words that belong together
- completely miss the point
- miss the point of an argument
On the page
Counting the errors misses the point: the study concerns how people recover from them.
He corrected her pronunciation and missed the point of the question.
Word forms
- Base
- miss the point
Usage notes
Verbal idiom: miss/misses/missed/missing the point. Usually the point, with a definite central issue understood from context. Register: neutral. Commonness: common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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