Word of the week: Mismessaged

Get the message?

July 3, 2018 at 5:29PM
Miami-Dade said it wiped the data from 13 phones temporarily issued county officials for a two-week trade mission to China and Japan in March 2018. The Miami Herald requested text messages from one of the phones, only to discover the data had been deleted. That could be a violation of state law. (Dreamstime) ORG XMIT: 1229516
Not all text messages are on point, much less on target. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Definition: To send a text message to the wrong person.

Sample usage: "I butt-mismessaged a tornado emoji to my mom and now she's sending me texts from the basement asking where I am."

Popularity: You could say "wrong number," but that feels inaccurate because no voice communication is involved. Alas, it has too many letters to type, so people will peck out "sry msmssgd U." Which looks like a butt-text.

JAMES LILEKS

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about the writer

about the writer

James Lileks

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James Lileks is a Star Tribune columnist.

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