mistake someone/something for someone/something

mistake | American Dictionary

mistake
noun[ C ]
us/mɪˈsteɪk/
an action or decision that is wrong or produces a result that is not correct or not intended:
We all make mistakes.
[ + to infinitive ]It was a mistake to come to this restaurant without a reservation.
 by mistake
By mistake means unintentionally:
I’m sorry – I must have dialed your number by mistake.
mistake
verb[ T ]
us/mɪˈsteɪk/past tensemistookus/mɪˈstʊk/ | past participlemistakenus/mɪˈsteɪ·kən/
to be wrong about or fail to recognize something or someone:
[ Talways+ adv/prep ]I called Karen and mistook her mother for her (= I thought I was speaking to Karen when I was speaking to her mother).

Examples of mistake

mistake
The work also suffers from editorial mistakes that detract from its content.
The spelling mistakes are distracting (pp. 35, 157), and the endnotes are not practical, especially in the absence of a bibliography.
The text, however, includes a number of mistakes and questionable statements.
Failure in diagnosis is one of the most fundamental mistakes made.
Four views that might be mistaken for the asymmetric view of social and natural inequalities were then presented.
Not to be mistaken for the real thing, art is strictly representation.
Therefore, during spindle recovery chromosomes may be rearranged on the spindle and mistakes in the segregation between microtubules and chromosomes may occur.
The new machine is said to be far more sophisticated and able to make judgements according to circumstances and to learn from mistakes.
Should the agent warn only against possible mistakes, and simply register eective errors?
Insufficient generosity and uninformed views amongst the public were hindering social democracy as much as inadequate levels of economic growth or mistaken policies.
On the face of it, these mistakes had little to do with the historical experience of the country.
The findings are inconsistent with both frameworks, suggesting that both democratic peace and clash of civilizations claims are mistaken.
Any mistakes that remain are, of course, the sole responsibility of the authors.
The interactions between the researcher and researched are uncovered, mistakes are revealed and the way in which data is generated becomes more transparent.
Even if they failed, others could learn from their mistakes.
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These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations withmistake

mistake

These are words often used in combination with mistake.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

big mistake
But that, she will insist, is a bigmistake.
classic mistake
His is the classicmistake of learning language with his eyes instead of his ears.
colossal mistake
That emphasises my point that they made a colossalmistake.
From the
Hansard archive