idiom · neutral
miss the point
/mɪs ðə pɔɪnt/MISS·the·POINT
to fail to understand the main idea or the essential meaning
Examples
“He missed the point of the lecture and focused on minor details.”
“Don't miss the point — the aim is to improve skills, not just memorise facts.”
“She kept arguing about wording and completely missed the point.”
Band 8 sentence
“Critics who miss the point of the study tend to focus on peripheral data rather than its core conclusions.”
Collocations
- miss the point of the argument
- completely miss the point
Word family
Common mistakes
He missed point of the lecture.→He missed the point of the lecture.
She missed the main pointed.→She missed the main point.
Say it for a higher band
5not understand→6fail to grasp→7+miss the point
Synonyms
fail to understand
Easily confused
lose the point
“He seemed to lose the point halfway through, but actually he had missed the point from the start.”
Related words
Learn this word with the rest of its set, and get reminded at the right time.
In Study
Learn it with its set