misentitle

English

Etymology

mis- +‎ entitle

Verb

misentitle (third-person singular simple present misentitles, present participle misentitling, simple past and past participle misentitled)

1. To give an inappropriate title to; to mistitle.
   • 1882 December, “Reviews and Bibliographical Notices: On the Climate and Fevers of India”, in The Dublin Journal of Medical Science, volume 74, number 132, page 466:

     In the forefront, of course, is Dr. Gordon, C.B. (whom he oddly misentitles “late Chief of the Medical Service in Madras" ), who is popularly believed, in the Madras Presidency, where he was Surgeon-General of the British Medical Service, to have denied the existence of specific enteric fever altogether.

   • 1994, Verdone V. State of Wisconsin, page 2:

     The Brief of Appellant filed herein will hereinafter be called "App. Bf ."; and the Complaint herein, which Verdone misentitles "Declaration, " will be called "Complaint."

   • 2014, Alistair Heys, The Anatomy of Bloom, page 169:

     Bloom then turns to what he describes as the essay misentitled “Nature,” which is transcendental to the point of refusing to acknowledge nature as any more than a natural blank created by our own perceptions: “The ruin or the blank that we see when we look at nature, is in our own eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with the axis of things and so they appear not transparent but opaque."

2. To entitle wrongly; to grant a right or rights which are not deserved or appropriate.
   • 1882, “Campau v. Brown”, in Michigan Reports: Reports of Cases Heard and Decided in the Supreme Court of Michigan, volume 48, page 147:

     Here, as there, the surviving wife has herself misentitled her own cause, and in the present case if strictness of practice were observed she would appear as sole plaintiff in error impleaded with a living person from whom there has been no severance, and therefore no right of separate proceeding.

   • 1904, The English Reports - Volume 37, page 782:

     It was not at the option of the plaintiffs to cross-examine or not; if that were the practice, the consequence would be that a party might misentitle the interrogatories, and then, when he found that matter came out upon the examination of some of the witnesses, that made against him, he might refuse to examine them again, and get rid of their evidence.

   • 1936, Corpus Juris Secundum: A Complete Restatement of the Entire American Law as Developed by All Reported Cases, Volume 88, page 121:

     Where it appears that the plaintiff has misentitled his or her action for the sole purpose […]