A slip; a false step.
1837. In the overflow of his heart with kindess, so eager was he to give a generous welcome to a traveling stranger, that forgetting the round door block, he made a misstep, and, the block rolling, had met the sad misfortune of calling forth a loud, yet half-stifled burst of laughter from the crowd, and with the still more sad calamity of utterly demolishing both pipe and pipe-stem.—Yale Lit. Mag., iii. 8 (Nov.).
1851. I should be sorry to have you make a misstep.—S. Judd, ‘Margaret,’ ii. 172.
1855. One evening in April, 1562, as he [Don Carlos] was descending a flight of stairs, he made a misstep, and fell headlong down five or six stairs against a door at the bottom of the passage.—Prescott, ‘Philip II.,’ i. 140. (N.E.D.)
1888. Miss B. made a mis-step in alighting from her carriage.—Boston Globe, Feb. 2. (Farmer).
