Adjective: amiss
Pronunciation:(u’mis)
Amiss meaning:
- Not functioning properly
Synonyms: awry, haywire, wrong
Adverb: amiss
Pronunciation:(u’mis)
Amiss meaning:
- Away from the correct or expected course
Synonyms: awry
- In an improper, mistaken or unfortunate manner
- In an imperfect or faulty way
Synonyms: imperfectly
Quotations:
- Ryan O’Connell – How To Tell If Somebody Loves You: Somebody loves you if they pick an eyelash off of your face or wet a napkin and apply it to your dirty skin. You didn’t ask for these things, but this person went ahead and did it anyway. They don’t want to see you looking like a fool with eyelashes and crumbs on your face. They notice these things. They really look at you and are the first to notice if something is amiss with your beautiful visage!Somebody loves you if they assume the role of caretaker when you’re sick. Unsure if someone really gives a shit about you? Fake a case of food poisoning and text them being like, Oh, my God, so sick. Need water. Depending on their response, you’ll know whether or not they really love you. That’s terrible. Feel better! earns you a stay in friendship jail; Do you need anything? I can come over and bring you get well remedies! gets you a cozy friendship suite. It’s easy to care about someone when they don’t need you. It’s easy to love them when they’re healthy and don’t ask you for anything beyond change for the parking meter. Being sick is different. Being sick means asking someone to hold your hair back when you vomit. Either love me with vomit in my hair or don’t love me at all.Somebody loves you if they call you out on your bullshit. They’re not passive, they don’t just let you get away with murder. They know you well enough and care about you enough to ask you to chill out, to bust your balls, to tell you to stop. They aren’t passive observers in your life, they are in the trenches. They have an opinion about your decisions and the things you say and do. They want to be a part of it; they want to be a part of you.Somebody loves you if they don’t mind the quiet. They don’t mind running errands with you or cleaning your apartment while blasting some annoying music. There’s no pressure, no need to fill the silences. You know how with some of your friends there needs to be some sort of activity for you to hang out? You don’t feel comfortable just shooting the shit and watching bad reality TV with them. You need something that will keep the both of you busy to ensure there won’t be a void. That’s not love. That’s Hey, babe! I like you okay. Do you wanna grab lunch? I think we have enough to talk about to fill two hours!” It’s a damn dream when you find someone you can do nothing with. Whether you’re skydiving together or sitting at home and doing different things, it’s always comfortable. That is fucking love.Somebody loves you if they want you to be happy, even if that involves something that doesn’t benefit them. They realize the things you need to do in order to be content and come to terms with the fact that it might not include them. Never underestimate the gift of understanding. When there are so many people who are selfish and equate relationships as something that only must make them happy, having someone around who can take their needs out of any given situation if they need to.Somebody loves you if they can order you food without having to be told what you want. Somebody loves you if they rub your back at any given moment. Somebody loves you if they give you oral sex without expecting anything back. Somebody loves you if they don’t care about your job or how much money you make. It’s a relationship where no one is selling something to the other. No one is the prostitute. Somebody loves you if they’ll watch a movie starring Kate Hudson because you really really want to see it. Somebody loves you if they’re able to create their own separate world with you, away from the internet and your job and family and friends. Just you and them.Somebody will always love you. If you don’t think this is true, then you’re not paying close enough attention.
- Salman Rushdie – Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet. Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.
- Arthur Schopenhauer – To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn’t.
- Melanie Joy – It’s just the way things are. Take a moment to consider this statement. Really think about it. We send one species to the butcher and give our love and kindness to another apparently for no reason other than because it’s the way things are. When our attitudes and behaviors towards animals are so inconsistent, and this inconsistency is so unexamined, we can safely say we have been fed absurdities. It is absurd that we eat pigs and love dogs and don’t even know why. Many of us spend long minutes in the aisle of the drugstore mulling over what toothpaste to buy. Yet most of don’t spend any time at all thinking about what species of animal we eat and why. Our choices as consumers drive an industry that kills ten billion animals per year in the United States alone. If we choose to support this industry and the best reason we can come up with is because it’s the way things are, clearly something is amiss. What could cause an entire society of people to check their thinking caps at the door and to not even realize they’re doing so? Though this question is quite complex, the answer is quite simple.
- Benjamin Franklin – You desire to know something of my Religion. It is the first time I have been questioned upon it: But I do not take your Curiosity amiss, and shall endeavor in a few Words to gratify it I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some doubts as to his divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and I think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.
- Kerstin Gier – The lion-as proud as the diamond bright,Though the spell may be clouding that radiant light-in the death of the sun what’s amiss will then mend, while the raven is dying discloses the end.
- Annie Dillard – It would seem that emotions are the curse, not death-emotions that appear to have developed upon a few freaks as a special curse from Malevolence. All right then. It is our emotions that are amiss. We are freaks, the world is fine, and let us all go have lobotomies to restore us to a natural state. We can leave the library then, go back to the creek lobotomized, and live on its banks as untroubled as any muskrat or reed. You first.
- Neel Burton – You see, people in the depressive position are often stigmatized as failures’ or losers’. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. If these people are in the depressive position, it is most probably because they have tried too hard or taken on too much, so hard and so much that they have made themselves ill with depression’. In other words, if these people are in the depressive position, it is because their world was simply not good enough for them. They wanted more, they wanted better, and they wanted different, not just for themselves, but for all those around them. So if they are failures or losers, this is only because they set the bar far too high. They could have swept everything under the carpet and pretended, as many people do, that all is for the best in the best of possible worlds. But unlike many people, they had the honesty and the strength to admit that something was amiss, that something was not quite right. So rather than being failures or losers, they are just the opposite: they are ambitious, they are truthful, and they are courageous. And that is precisely why they got ill’. To make them believe that they are suffering from some chemical imbalance in the brain and that their recovery depends solely or even mostly on popping pills is to do them a great disfavor: it is to deny them the precious opportunity not only to identify and address important life problems, but also to develop a deeper and more refined appreciation of themselves and of the world around them and therefore to deny them the opportunity to fulfill their highest potential as human beings.
- Stephen King – It would perhaps not be amiss to point out that he had always tried to be a good dog. He had tried to do all the things his man and his woman, and most of all his boy, had asked or expected of him. He would have died for them, if that had been required. He had never wanted to kill anybody. He had been struck by something, possibly destiny, or fate, or only a degenerative nerve disease called rabies. Free will was not a factor.
- Daphne du Maurier – I wonder when it was that the world first went amiss, and men forgot how to live and to love and to be happy.
Sample sentences:
- She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods… The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers stern and wild ones and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
- Fortunately, some are born with spiritual immune systems that sooner or later give rejection to the illusory worldview grafted upon them from birth through social conditioning. They begin sensing that something is amiss, and start looking for answers. Inner knowledge and anomalous outer experiences show them a side of reality others are oblivious to, and so begins their journey of awakening. Each step of the journey is made by following the heart instead of following the crowd and by choosing knowledge over the veils of ignorance.
- Think you God built this place, wishing man ill and not lusts uncontrolled or swords unsheathed? Not God, my friend. The truth’s more hideous still: These halls were carved by men while yet they breathed.God is no parent or policeman grim dispensing treats or punishments to all.Each soul climbs or descends by its own whim. He mourns, but He cannot prevent their fall.We suffer as we choose. Nothing’s amiss. All torments are deserved.
- To tell the truth, this was one of the few cases in which she had not told him just what she was thinking. Usually, she let him know whatever thoughts happened to come to her, and indeed he never took it amiss if she let slip a word that might pain him, because when all was said and done that was the price one paid for sincerity.
- See that I am God. See that I am in everything. See that I do everything. See that I have never stopped ordering my works, nor ever shall, eternally. See that I lead everything on to the conclusion I ordained for it before time began, by the same power, wisdom and love with which I made it. How can anything be amiss?
- Indeed Not. Stop kicking me, Daine. You understand, she is very important to a number of powerful nobles and mages in Tortall.” Numair’s voice was quiet, almost friendly; his eyes were hard. “Their majesties. Lady Alanna and her husband, the baron of Pirate’s Swoop. Me. All of us would take iit amiss if we thought for a moment she was being trifled with, particularly by a young man who wasn’t free to do the right thing by her.””Numair,” Daine growled. “Can I speak to you privately for a moment?”No. Stepping on my foot won’t work either. Do I make myself clear, Prince Kaddar?
- You just know something is amiss, when you look at someone and long for something that is not yours or you cannot have. It’s an absence–a loss of a heartbeat.
- When I was 14, a camp counselor explained what “eating out” was and I vowed to never have it done to me. It seemed cannibalistic and unhygienic. I also remember that she claimed–in front of an entire cabin of girls–to have been “eaten out” by one of the maintenance men in a hot tub. Under hot water. Either something is amiss in my memory of this conversation or she found the most talented man on the planet and all hope is lost for the rest of us.
- I need you to scry for Lousha,” he said. “You told me once that you could.””Yeah, I can get you in her vicinity.”Garreth had taken Lucia’s scent into him and could find her from miles away.”That’ll work.” Witches could come in handy, he supposed.”But I don’t do gratis.”Garreth bluidy hated witches! “Charge me what you will! Just give me the fucking coordinates.”In the background, he heard Bowen say, “Mari, never let it be said that I doona support your extortion–“”Entrepreneurial-ness,” she corrected.”But a family discount, love, would no’ be amiss.””The whole family? Fine,” she said. “I’m scrying.” While Garreth waited, she groused about how extended the “MacRieve pack” was.
- Only then did I see. Something was amiss with Patrick’s snap-on one piece, or “onesie” as we manly dads like to call it. His chubby thighs, I now realized, were squeezed into the armholes, which were so tight they must have been cutting off his circulation. The collared neck hung between his legs like an udder. Up top, Patrick’s head stuck out through the unsnapped crotch, and his arms were lost somewhere in the billowing pant legs. It was quite a look.
- The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
- Many of us spend long minutes in the aisle of the drugstore mulling over what toothpaste to buy. Yet most of us don’t spend any time at all thinking about what species of animal we eat and why. Our choices as consumers drive an industry that kills ten billion* animals per year in the United States alone. If we choose to support this industry and the best reason we can come up with is because it’s the way things are, clearly something is amiss.
- To trust in the strength of God in our weakness; to say, I am weak: so let me be: God is strong; to seek from him who is our life, as the natural, simple cure of all that is amiss with us, power to do, and be, and live, even when we are weary,this is the victory that overcometh the world.To believe in God our strength in the face of all seeming denial, to believe in him out of the heart of weakness and unbelief, in spite of numbness and weariness and lethargy; to believe in the wide-awake real, through all the stupefying, enervating, distorting dream;to will to wake, when the very being seems athirst for a godless repose; these are the broken steps up to the high fields where repose is but a form of strength, strength but a form of joy, joy but a form of love. I am weak, says the true soul, but not so weak that I would not be strong; not so sleepy that I would not see the sun rise; not so lame but that I would walk! Thanks be to him who perfects strength in weakness, and gives to his beloved while they sleep!
- the fire seven times tried this;seven times tried that judgement isthat did never choose amiss some there be that shadows kiss;such have but a shadows bliss,there be fool alive, i wissilverd o’er, and so was thisTake what wife you will to bedI will ever be your head.So be gone; you are sped.
- Normally he was fond of most things. He was a good-natured and cheerful young man, who liked life and the great majority of those who lived it contemporaneously with himself. He had no enemies and many friends.But today he had noticed from the moment he had got out of bed that something was amiss with the world. Either he was in the grip of some divine discontent due to the highly developed condition of his soul, or else he had a grouch. One of the two.
- Myriads of professing Christians nowadays seem utterly unable to distinguish things that differ. Like people afflicted with color-blindness, they are incapable of discerning what is true and what is false, what is sound and what is unsound. If a preacher of religion is only clever and eloquent and earnest, they appear to think he is all right, however strange and heterogeneous his sermons may be. They are destitute of spiritual sense, apparently, and cannot detect error. Popery or Protestantism, an atonement or no atonement, a personal Holy Ghost or no Holy Ghost, future punishment or no future punishment, high church or low church or broad church, Trinitarianism, Arianism, or Unitarianism nothing comes amiss to them; they can swallow it all, even if they cannot digest it! Carried away by a fancied liberality and charity, they seem to think everybody is right and nobody is wrong, every clergyman is sound and none are unsound, everybody is going to be saved and nobody going to be lost. Their religion is made of negatives; and the only positive thing about them is that they dislike distinctness and think all extreme and decided and positive views are very naughty and very wrong!
- They told tales as they sat at their work, and every one related what wonderful things he had seen or experienced. One afternoon I heard an old man among them say that God knew every thing, both what had happened and what would happen. That idea occupied my whole mind, and towards evening, as I went alone from the court, where there was a deep pond, and stood upon some stones which were just within the water, the thought passed through my head, whether God actually knew everything which was to happen there. Yes, he has now determined that I should live and be so many years old, thought I; but, if I now were to jump into the water here and drown myself, then it would not be as he wished; and all at once I was firmly and resolutely determined to drown myself. I ran to where the water was deepest, and then a new thought passed through my soul. “It is the devil who wishes to have power over me!” I uttered a loud cry, and, running away from the place as if I were pursued, fell weeping into my mother’s arms. But neither she nor any one else could wring from me what was amiss with me.
- I don’t always believe in God, but, I believe something is amiss.
- So he decided he would never listen to anybody he knew? That’s just like someone in a fairy tale.’Knowing he had given his trust amiss, how could he bestow it again?’That’s foolish. Did he expect never to make any mistakes?
- I wondered straightaway how he could sit at peace there, of an evening, with the row of heads staring down at him. There were no pictures, no flowers: only the heads of chamois. The concession to melody was the radiogram and the stack of records of classical music.Foolishly, I had asked, “Why only chamois?”He answered at once, “They fear Man.”This might have led to an argument about animals in general, domestic, wild, and those which adapt themselves to the whims and vagaries of the human race; but instead he changed the subject abruptly, put on a Sibelius record, and presently made love to me, intently but without emotion. I was surprised but pleased. I thought, “We are suited to one another. There will be no demands. Each of us will be self-contained and not beholden to the other.”All this came true, but something was amiss. There was a flaw – not only the nonappearance of children, but a division of the spirit. The communion of flesh which brought us together was in reality a chasm, and I despised the bridge we made. Perhaps he did as well. I had been endeavoring for ten years to build for my self a ledge of safety.
- A bad reputation is seldom completely amiss.
- A ballad once in a while doesn’t go amiss.
- He that doth amiss may do well.
- He that does amiss may do well.
- Who begins amiss ends amiss.
- If there be nothing, but that which is has been before, how are our brains beguiled, which, laboring for invention, bear amiss the second burden of a former child!
- Don’t take it amiss if I criticize your work.
- Nothing comes amiss to him.
- Don’t take it amiss!
- He came amiss.