miscommand

present singular third person miscommands · participle present miscommanding · participle past miscommanded · past miscommanded

1. To command incompetently.

   If either the superiors miscommand, or the inferiors disobey, it is an affront to peace.

   1808, Joseph Hall, The Works

   3 more examples

   If a Governour make a new Sacrament, I will not obey, because: his command is null, and the thing simply evil. If he miscommand a Circumstance of Time, or Place, or Gesture, I will consider the consequents.

   1659, Richard Baxter, Five Disputations of Church-government and Worship, page 423

   The truant skipped his drill, but had an eye no man could turn aside or miscommand for where the quarry of his spirit lay.

   1904, Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, page 609

   Also at this time we would question the engineers about the failsafe mode that the satellite must go into in case an operator miscommands, or a failure of a redundant system in an attitude control system

   1980, Executive Summary of the Working Conference on Advanced Electrotechnology Applications to Nuclear Power Plants, page 32

plural miscommands

1. countableuncountableIncompetence at commanding.

   Thersites , a chronic complainer, scolds Agamemnon for miscommand, and is rebuked and beaten by Odysseus.

   1998, Coles Notes, The Iliad, page 28

   2 more examples

   This applied to the privates in the ranks, and to officers in the highest grades. The attempt to smother up and to stifle investigation ordered to be made late the miscommand of its members who have brought disgrace upon its name, gives us a painful reply.

   1873 December 27, “Ther National Guard”, in The United States Army and Navy Journal, volume 11, number 26, page 316

   While he finished that glass, he managed to pay devoted attention to both charmers, meanwhile spieling away with a masterly miscommand of English to the large group that now surrounded him.

   1961, The Reader's Digest - Volume 78, page 204