missignify

English

Etymology

mis- +‎ signify

Verb

missignify (third-person singular simple present missignifies, present participle missignifying, simple past and past participle missignified)

1. To signify falsely; to give the appearance of something that is not true.
   • 1996, David Cressy, “Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern England”, in Journal of British Studies, volume 35, number 4, page 442:

     It was unconsciounable that the sign should missignify, the costume deceive.

   • 1999, Josiah Blackmore, Gregory S. Hutcheson, Queer Iberia, page 89:

     These are, then, (dis) simulators, subjects who missignify, who abuse signs for their own pleasure.

   • 2003, Brian Donnelly, The Socialist Émigré: Marxism and the Later Tillich, page 45:

     But they are signs which, on the one hand, missignify what causes them and, on the other, cause that which, as signs, they deny.