misdecipher

English

Etymology

mis- +‎ decipher

Verb

misdecipher (third-person singular simple present misdeciphers, present participle misdeciphering, simple past and past participle misdeciphered)

1. To decipher incorrectly.
   • 1881, George Gould (of Bermondsey.), Corrigenda and Explanations of the Text of Shakspere, page 53:

     Then a number of these mistakes are corrected and lines necessary for sense recovered by modern editors from the previous editions themselves, which effectually shows that the plays were transcribed, and that these mistakes were largely made from misdeciphering the manuscript, as no printer, however bad, could possibly have made them if he had print to copy from.

   • 1938, Sylvanus Griswold Morley, The Inscriptions of Petén - Volume 3, page 128:

     Spinden completely misdeciphers this I. S. He gives two variant readings, both based upon incorrect decipherments of the terminal date, as follows:

   • 1983, Essays on Detective Fiction, page 37:

     The supplementary puzzles, like the half-burned note whose message we decipher (or misdecipher) in Death in Ecstasy, do not further the main investigation, and can send us down a blind alley or after a red herring.

   • 2019, Saroja Krishnamurthy, “A Mother's Thought”, in Sending Love to Mom, page 87:

     I don't know how people misdecipher the loving beats of a heart