misgather

English

Etymology

mis- +‎ gather

Verb

misgather (third-person singular simple present misgathers, present participle misgathering, simple past and past participle misgathered)

1. To accumulate or assemble incorrectly.
   • 1859, Roger Bacon, edited by John Sherren Brewer, Fr. Rogeri Bacon: opera quædam hactenus inedita, page 375:

     Some leaves have been lost or misgathered; the MS., however, affords no indication for deciding which of these suppositions is correct.

   • 1870, Henry A. Bragg, Tekel, page 235:

     Several days were devoted to the examination of a cloud of witnesses, for and against; establishing character here, and destroying it there; — and more neighborhood and family secrets, scandal, odds, ends, and intervals of speech, and misgathered testimony were soon upon the wing, than it was possible for the atmosphere to sustain or the ear to register.

   • 1972, A. G. Martin, Finishing Processes in Printing, page 174:

     Theoretically the machine is foolproof and cannot misgather but in practice the hoppers are sometimes loaded with the wrong sections and this necessitates a percentage check on the product of the machine.

   • 1993, Thomas Shadwell, Judith Bailey Slagle, Thomas Shadwell's The Woman-Captain, page 18:

     In the control copy, Henry E. Huntington Library, the Epilogue appears at the end of Act 5 on L1 (verso blank), this unsigned page was obviously gathered differently by a binder. A misgathered Princeton copy places the Epilogue before the Dedication.

   • 2016, Suzanna Mathews, Revising Mrs. Robinson:

     Both Diana and Sydney had over-focused on some features to the exclusion of others, causing them to misgather and misuse the “data” they had about their lovers.

2. To infer or conclude incorrectly.
   • 1844, Thomas Jackson, The Works of Thomas Jackson, D.D:

     Thus we sometimes misgather those things (the sun for example) to be hot themselves, which produce heat in others; those to be cold, which cause sense of cold; those most, which leave an impression of moisture where noe wasor was unfelt before their operation: yet is the moon neither cold nor moist in itself, although the true cause of coldness or mostening in subjects aptly disposed to either quality.

   • 1963, United States. Congress. House. Committee on Government Operations, Government Information Plans and Policies, page 478:

     Secondly, I have gathered from your testimony, though I mention it because I want to be correct if I misgather it, that NASA is an operating agency, not an intelligence agency.

   • 1972, Ghița Ionescu, Comparative Communist Politics, page 8:

     The lower the discriminating conceptual power the more the facts are misgathered, i.e. the greater the misinformation – and vice versa .