as in naughty
engaging in or marked by childish misbehavior
a new approach for disciplining a chronically misbehaving child
Synonyms & Similar Words
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Antonyms & Near Antonyms
as in disobeying
to behave badly
scolded the children for misbehaving and sent them to bed early
Synonyms & Similar Words
Antonyms & Near Antonyms
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Recent Examples of misbehaving
Judith Martin, Mercury News, 1 Dec. 2025
Adjective
Why must members of the public be disrespected by unruly, misbehaving, noisy children, who are then defended by adults who should know better?
—Judith Martin, Mercury News, 1 Dec. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for misbehaving
Adjective
-
The play was naughty stuff in 1925, when the show, starring Tallulah Bankhead, got banned.—
Sheldon Pearce,
New Yorker,
15 May 2026
-
But theatergoers around me couldn’t seem to get enough, no matter how repetitive the naughty humor became.—
Theater Critic,
Los Angeles Times,
1 May 2026
Verb
-
Saulter was being investigated for allegedly falsifying time sheets, disobeying a direct order and failing to report part-time employment properly.—
Lillie Davidson,
Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
15 May 2026
-
Authorities last August removed Dodik from the post of the president and temporarily banned him from politics for disobeying Schmidt's decisions.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
11 May 2026
Adjective
-
Like tapping into that mischievous kid in me.—
Louis Peitzman,
Vulture,
18 May 2026
-
There on the screen, staring back at me, are two gigantic black eyes and a mischievous smile stitched on a massive, crocheted head — features of the mysterious, endlessly cheeky mask that has become Chuyin’s signature.—
Julyssa Lopez,
Rolling Stone,
17 May 2026
Verb
-
Embracing a visual vocabulary of the lowbrow and the rudimentary is a tried-and-true method of rebelling against a culture that feels vapid or corporatized.—
Kyle Chayka,
New Yorker,
6 May 2026
-
Two decades after Steve Jobs premiered the iPhone, a small but passionate movement — with offshoots in several countries — is rebelling against the omnipresent screen.—
ABC News,
ABC News,
15 Apr. 2026
Adjective
-
West Ham showed themselves to be a bad team, less than the sum of their parts and wholly ill-equipped for the challenge in front of them.—
George Caulkin,
New York Times,
18 May 2026
-
Each reiteration and exaggeration of Mary’s bad behavior is another civic stroke of the chisel that perfects the monumental Lincoln in our collective imagination.—
Thomas Mallon,
New Yorker,
18 May 2026
Cite this Entry
“Misbehaving.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/misbehaving. Accessed 20 May. 2026.
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