Many times during conversation I hear the phrase Don't mistake me. Is it grammatically correct when used to mean Don't take negative connotation of my word. Shouldn't they say Don't take me by mistake?
Learn English – “Don’t mistake me”
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There is no negative connotation at all to 'youth' or 'youths'.
However,if people only ever use it in the negative contexts you describe, then it may gain that negative connotation, pushings things over the euphemism waterfall.
The idiomatic expression dates back to the 17th century and means to shout angrily and wildly. The expression is generally used with a negative connotation, but to “rave” isn’t quite as positive as you seem to believe.
According to the following extract from The Grammarphobia both terms are used with the negative connotations that were in vogue at that time:
The verb “rave” can be negative as well as positive. You can rave in anger about something or rave in praise of it.
The verb “rave” has undergone a few changes over the centuries. Let’s follow its history, with a few interruptions along the way. When “rave” came into English in the 1300s, it didn’t involve shouting or other forms of self-expression. It meant “to be mad, to show signs of madness or delirium,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The word’s origins are uncertain, but there’s a connection with “reverie,” which originally meant wild and uncontrolled behavior. “Reverie” came into English in the 1300s from Middle French, where it implied madness, delirium, wandering of the mind, and so on. Going back to “rave,” the OED says it developed new senses in the 1500s and 1600s, when it came to mean “to rage furiously or intensely” and “to speak or declaim wildly, irrationally, or incoherently.”
These are the senses of the word used in the expression “rant and rave,” which was first recorded in the 1600s.
To rant has a later origin and dates back from the early 17th century:
To “rant,” a word dating from 1602. It came from the Dutch randen (to talk foolishly or rave).
To “rant,” according to the OED, originally meant “to talk or declaim in an extravagant or hyperbolical manner; to use bombastic language; (esp. of an actor) to orate or speak in a melodramatic or grandiose style.”
Later, in the mid-1600s, ranting became angrier. “Rant” came to mean “to speak furiously; to storm or rage violently.”
So to “rant and rave” means, in the words of the OED, “to talk or declaim hyperbolically, wildly, or furiously, now esp. as if mad or delirious.”
Best Answer
Mistake can be used as a verb, exactly as you cite it in your example. The noun use is a lot more common.