misbehave

[ mis-bi-heyv ]

verb (used without object)

, mis·be·haved, mis·be·hav·ing.

1. to behave badly or improperly:

   The children misbehaved during our visit.

verb (used with object)

, mis·be·haved, mis·be·hav·ing.

1. to conduct (oneself ) without regard for good manners or accepted moral standards:

   Several of the guests misbehaved themselves.

misbehave

/ ˌmɪsbɪˈheɪvjə; ˌmɪsbɪˈheɪv /

verb

1. to behave (oneself) badly

Derived Forms

• misbehaviour, noun
• ˌmisbeˈhaver, noun

Other Words From

• misbe·haver noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of misbehave¹

late Middle English word dating back to 1425–75; mis- ¹, behave

Example Sentences

It does its best to misbehave, transgressing between the real and the imaginary, between emotions dangerously raw and overcooked, breaking boundaries between what we call classical music and what we don’t.

From Los Angeles Times

This was hard yakka in hot sun on an unresponsive pitch with a ball less likely to misbehave than a child on Christmas Eve.

From BBC

Along the way, we’ll meet Bowen Yang as an elf suing Santa Claus for wages, presented as a “Court TV” broadcast; Aidy Bryant pitching dresses for toilets; a nightclub for gay hamsters, “where they could walk in, dance, misbehave and forget about the tedious endless loop of their exercise wheel,” and also a hamster CVS; mermaids staffing a call center; a little blue Smurf-like figurine that becomes Julio’s inept social media director; an abusive executive goldfish; and Paul Dano in a sexualized parody of “ALF.”

From Los Angeles Times

The independent report also states that there is currently no reliable way of understanding exactly why AI tools generate the output that they do – even among developers – and that the established safety testing practice of Red Teaming, in which evaluators deliberately try to get an AI tool to misbehave, has no best-practice guidelines.

From BBC

And when large language models do misbehave or go off the rails, nobody can really explain why.

From New York Times

Related Words

• act up
• fool around
• trespass