fascinated by how "dislocate" seems to be a word used almost exclusively to refer to the misalignment of bodies, or parts of the body, from their proper place. it's distinctly anatomical. you don't say "i dislocated my keys" for instance, even though that's technically a correct and coherent sentence.
on the other hand, it would be really funny to say "i misplaced my shoulder" to announce a devastating injury
it went that way 👉
It's because the dis- prefix in English carries a strong sense of undoing or reversal, whereas mis- means to do badly
So if my keys are misplaced that means I put them in the wrong spot, but if they are displaced it means someone else moved them from where they were supposed to be.
There's a lot of dis- words for bodyparts! Dislocate, dismember, disarticulate - if a corpse is disarticulated that means it's all jumbled up and torn apart. If it's misarticulated you put it together wrong in the first place (and your name is Victor Frankenstein).
....a better minimal pair would have been disassembled (taken apart) vs misassembled (put together wrong) wouldn't it
The existence of the word "misadventure" (unfortunate event happening to you, typically of your own doing) implies the existence of "disadventure" (unfortunate event of someone else's doing) and I'll be bringing this into my vocabulary for situations where other people's mistakes have become my problem.
New DnD creature called a "misplacer beast" that's just really clumsy