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PlainSpell

hit-or-miss

adjective

hit-or-miss is an adjective meaning “Inconsistent, unpredictable, erratic; sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing with no apparent pattern” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled H-I-T-O-R-M-I-S-S.

What does hit-or-miss mean?

adjective

  1. 1

    USinformalInconsistent, unpredictable, erratic; sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing with no apparent pattern.

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Forms of hit-or-miss

  • more hit- comparative
  • most hit- superlative
  • hit-and-miss
  • hit or miss
  • hit and miss

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).

Words people confuse with hit-or-miss

Word pairs people search, with the monthly searches for “a vs b” (G: Google, B: Bing, United States).

hit-and-miss vs hit-or-miss0 B

Also written: hit-and-miss.

Sources: Google and Bing searches (September 2025 to August 2026, through DataForSEO); English Wiktionary (homophones, alternative spellings).

Hit-or-miss in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese

In the sense inconsistent, unpredictable, erratic; sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing:

LanguageWords
Portugueseimprevisível, errático
Spanishensayo y error

Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.