to get your wires crossed
4
7.5
- idiom
- Informal
:
malentender
- I think you may have got your wires crossed when discussing the project details.
Examples
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We must have got our wires crossed.
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I think we got our wires crossed.
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You got your wires crossed tonight.
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It seems that we all got our wires crossed about the meeting time.
-
Sorry, I must have got my wires crossed; I thought the event was on Saturday.
Synonyms
10
3.2
Mistake words someone says, often in noisy places
To understand something in the wrong way
Antonyms
How Confused
1
5.3
31
3.0
- Informal
4
7.5
- Informal
82
4.9
Surface Forms
Morphology
The phrase relies on a metaphor (mental/communication 'wires' becoming 'crossed') so there is a visible link between the literal constituents and the idea of interference or malfunction, but the specific sense 'to misunderstand' is not directly derivable from the literal meanings. Additionally, 'get' here means 'become' rather than 'comprehend', and the electrical-metaphor mapping requires extra world knowledge, so a B1 learner who only knows the words would likely only partially infer the meaning.
Etymology
The idiom get your wires crossed may come from old telephone and electrical systems: if wires were crossed, calls or messages went to the wrong place. So when people get their wires crossed today, they 'misunderstand' each other or become confused because the connections are mixed up.