misappearance

plural misappearances

1. A false appearance; An instance of seeming as other than what is the true form; an illusion.

   Certain priests, whom he describes as conversing very learnedly together, appeared to the children, who were at some distance, like dead horses; and many the like misappearances.

   1883, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First-second Series, page 39

   2 more examples

   In the standing position, wth the fixation of the leg and foot on the ground, the adduction or abduction of the leg on the pelvis is a misappearance. In reality, there is in this position an actual adduction or abduction of the pelvis on the legs, created by the pelvis tilting laterally on the legs.

   1977, John Jesse, Hidden Causes of Injury, Prevention and Correction, for Running Athletes and Joggers, page 119

   Keeping both American theater and its double within the sight lines, I would like to look at MPD as a pathology in which both both performativity and social performance are outstripped by a mise-en-scène that veers past the merely performative and dangerously close to theater itself, threatening to erase the differences in its very misappearance.

   2002, Anthony Kubiak, Agitated States: Performance in the American Theater of Cruelty, →ISBN

2. Something that appears in a way that it should not.

   We know of no set of men who are more quick to detect any misappearance than the force having charge of the condition of the yard.

   1903, Annual Report of the Board of Prison Commissioners of Massachusetts