get the wrong end of the stick
B2CEFR level
40/100Rarity: uncommon
InformalRegister
To misunderstand a situation or what someone has said, often completely.
She got the wrong end of the stick and thought I was resigning, when I only meant taking leave.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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