mispromote

English

Etymology

mis- +‎ promote

Verb

mispromote (third-person singular simple present mispromotes, present participle mispromoting, simple past and past participle mispromoted)

1. To promote incorrectly; to advertise or advocate for something other than the intended use.
   • 1988, Laurie James, Why Margaret Fuller Ossoli is Forgotten, page 31:

     You can weep tears because of an up-to-date vision which misunderstands, mispromotes and bends the truth so as to preserve the eternal powerlessness of Margaret Fuller.

   • 1996, Linda Tate, A Southern Weave of Women: Fiction of the Contemporary South, page 181:

     As black women's works are rejected or mispromoted, " [t] he public ... is allowed to think that black women are generally incapable of literary creation" (Stetson 89) .

   • 2013, Daniel Potter, Jennifer Hanin, What to Do When You Can't Get Pregnant:

     When companies misuse or mispromote TCM herbs, results can be disastrous.

   • 2014, Simon Philo, British Invasion: The Crosscurrents of Musical Influence, page 135:

     Yellow Submarine was a commercial flop in Britain, mainly because it was mispromoted as a children's film.

   • 2020, Courtenay Stallings, Sheryl Lee, Laura's Ghost: Women Speak About Twin Peaks:

     Boxing Helena was so misunderstood and so mispromoted. Boxing Helena was never about “This is women's fault.”

   • 2022, Richard Blum, Andrew Herxheimer, Catherine Stenzl, Pharmaceuticals and Health Policy:

     Our own study began in 1974, after we had published a report on how prescription drugs in the United States are discovered, produced, promoted, priced, prescribed by physicians and used by patients — and how these potent products are too frequently mispromoted, mis-prescribed and misused.

2. To promote by mistake; to elevate to a position for which (someone) is unqualified.
   • 1957, Foundry Management & Technology - Volume 85, Issues 1-6, page 174:

     But the real tragedy, it seems to me, is that these victims of hasty or uninformed promotions struggle from job to job with the stigma of failure when the real failure was not theirs, but that of those who mispromoted them.

   • 1997, BD Smart, GH Smart, Topgrading the organization:

     People are C players when they are mishired, mispromoted, or misdeployed within their company.

   • 2009, Ivanka Menken, Organizational behavior and leadership management essentials, page 162:

     Mispromoting internally is about as costly as miss-hiring ^[sic] an external candidate.