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Glite Dictionary
wrong order

wrong order

1 2.3
A food or drink brought to you by mistake instead of what you ordered
  • noun
translation icon : pedido equivocado
  • If Dawn gets like the wrong order at a restaurant, how would she interact with a waiter?

It's easy to be upset that your Starbucks, they gave you the wrong order and it, you know, they misspelled your name.

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Examples

  • The concept of leftovers is unheard of, and should a waiter forget your drink or bring you the wrong order, you may have to whistle just to get his attention again.

    Blog text (2)

  • Naturally, they were delivered in the wrong order.

    Blame It on Rio (1984)

  • They're in the wrong order, though.

    Underwater! (1955)

  • It's easy to be upset that your Starbucks, they gave you the wrong order and it, you know, they misspelled your name.

    Tom Bilyeu

  • It's the wrong order.

    The Color of Money (1986)

  • So it's slipped through the cracks twice and then it makes it to my door and it's either the wrong order altogether, has the wrong ingredients on it.

    I've Had It

  • I was very disappointed when the restaurant delivered the wrong order instead of what I had chosen.

  • After waiting for half an hour, they finally brought me my wrong order, which was completely different from what I asked for.

  • When the waiter realized he had given me the wrong order, he quickly apologized and promised to fix it.

Surface Forms

wrong order singular
wrong orders plural

Morphology

wrong + order

The meaning is directly built from 'wrong' (incorrect/mistaken) modifying 'order' (a customer's request), so 'wrong order' straightforwardly denotes an order delivered or prepared incorrectly. This adjective+noun compositional pattern is common and cross-linguistically transparent, so a B1 learner who knows the constituents would readily infer the meaning.

Etymology

The phrase wrong order comes from restaurants and shops where your order is what you ask for, and if staff bring something wrong, it becomes a wrong order. So today it means 'a food or drink item delivered by mistake'.