How to Use misbehave in a Sentence

misbehave

verb
  • When your child misbehaves, rewards might be the last thing on your mind.
    — Amy Morin, Parents, 1 Apr. 2026
  • One reason is that some cat owners do like it when their cats misbehave.
    — Julia Métraux, Discover Magazine, 24 Aug. 2022
  • People went to Sean’s house to misbehave and get away with it.
    — Carly Tagen-Dye, PEOPLE, 24 June 2026
  • If someone in a group of friends misbehaves, the friendship is not good enough.
    — Egor Kirin, Forbes, 3 May 2023
  • Lawrence is hoping fans of both teams treat it as a special sporting event and do not misbehave.
    — Gary Bedore, Kansas City Star, 3 Sep. 2025
  • Students would no longer get worse grades for misbehaving or handing in work late.
    — Steven F. Wilson, The Atlantic, 24 Apr. 2026
  • Call me old-fashioned, but this dad has an easy solution to the misbehaving kids.
    — Christopher Elliott, USA TODAY, 20 Dec. 2024
  • Trying to rein in her misbehaving kid had been deeply isolating.
    — Rachel Monroe, The New Yorker, 21 June 2024
  • What ties these examples together is not just that tech misbehaved.
    — The Ai Insider, Interesting Engineering, 26 Aug. 2025
  • When your child misbehaves, teach them what to do instead instead of just giving a consequence.
    — Amy Morin, Parents, 24 July 2024
  • The question of whether or not muons really are misbehaving remains an open one.
    — Rahul Rao, Popular Science, 17 Aug. 2023
  • Berwald isn't alone in being bothered by misbehaving kids at breweries.
    — Jordyn Noennig, jsonline.com, 27 Oct. 2025
  • But for people with other diseases, the reason tau starts to misbehave is still unknown.
    — Sara Harrison, Wired, 26 Jan. 2022
  • But an incentive to misbehave is not the same as proof of misbehavior.
    — Andrew Stuttaford, National Review, 10 Apr. 2021
  • Be wary of misbehaving devices — in-person chats are more reliable than texts or emails.
    — Tarot.com, Chicago Tribune, 3 Feb. 2026
  • When lawyers misbehave, people stop believing in the court system and in equal justice.
    — The New Yorker, New Yorker, 4 May 2026
  • Gehl and his staff still have had to intervene when kids have misbehaved over the course of the brewery's nearly decade in business.
    — Jordyn Noennig, jsonline.com, 27 Oct. 2025
  • That has led to complaints that passengers who misbehave on one flight can simply fly on another.
    — Lori Aratani, Anchorage Daily News, 6 Apr. 2022
  • And when large language models do misbehave or go off the rails, nobody can really explain why.
    — Kevin Roose, New York Times, 21 May 2024
  • That perhaps the cult of the maestro in some way contributed to their ability to misbehave?
    — Malcolm Gay, BostonGlobe.com, 18 June 2021
  • What if Charlie gets mixed up with misbehaving kids, not murderous adults?
    — Alison Herman, Variety, 8 May 2025
  • Noem, of course, admitted in her memoir to shooting and killing a puppy of hers for misbehaving.
    — William Vaillancourt, Rolling Stone, 1 Feb. 2026
  • Students who are focused on class activities don’t have time to misbehave.
    — Tara García Mathewson, USA TODAY, 20 July 2023
  • Did Sandoval start a disease that is now infecting all men, leading them to misbehave in ways big and small?
    — Stephanie McNeal, Glamour, 26 July 2023
  • Parents, in turn, will be relieved of some of the stress of having a misbehaving child around child-free passengers.
    — Charlie Hobbs, Condé Nast Traveler, 30 Aug. 2023
  • If an agent misbehaves or is compromised, identity becomes the kill switch.
    — Kevin Bocek, Forbes.com, 11 Aug. 2025
  • The show was geared around portraying her in a positive light and most of the cast knew that their role was to misbehave a little bit, but not too much.
    — Louis Staples, Rolling Stone, 11 June 2023
  • One misbehaving app, too many open browser tabs, or background process can bring an otherwise healthy system to its knees.
    — Ken Colburn, AZCentral.com, 12 Jan. 2026
  • As long as new products are launched, and celebrities and politicians misbehave, the industry will live on—albeit in new forms.
    — Nancy A Shenker, Forbes, 8 Mar. 2023
  • That flight was scuttled by a misbehaving valve on the Atlas V rocket.
    — Kenneth Chang, New York Times, 5 June 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'misbehave.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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