miscompose

present singular third person miscomposes · participle present miscomposing · participle past miscomposed · past miscomposed

1. To compose badly.
   1. To produce a defective product or outcome.

      A study of the script reveals spelling mistakes and miscomposed letters, due to the incompetence of the engraver (and/or the incorrectness of his model).

      2011, Christopher Entwistle, Noël Adams, Gems of Heaven

      3 more examples

      And, grieved that lives so matched should miscompose, Each mourn the double waste; and question dare To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows, Why those high-purposed children never were: What will she answer?

      1866, Thomas Hardy, Nature's Indifference

      […] where much ridicule is directed against the old painter who wrote as Observator; ridicule miscomposed by the editor, Thomas Burgeland Johnson, who wrote also now and then under the pseudonym T. H. Needham.

      1929, Walter Shaw Sparrow, George Stubbs and Ben Marshall, page 61

      Its limitation of Knowledge constitutes by incompleteness, but also by openness to error, an Ignorance. In dealing with actualities it may misobserve, misuse, miscreate; in dealing with possibilities it may miscompose, miscombine, misapply, misplace; in its dealings with truths revealed to it it may deform, misrepresent, disharmonise.

      1944, Aurobindo Ghose, The Life Divine - Volume 2, page 169

   2. To arrange an artistic work in a disharmonious way.

      We could easily miscompose this so that the time-scales of the two hands matched "better":

      1988, Stephen Brown, The sense of music, page 249

      2 more examples

      The Leipzig Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung said that the favourite composer of the Viennese 'has in this case positively miscomposed', but the London Harmonicon considered that the Fantasy possessed 'merit far above the common order'.

      1985, Charles Osborne, Schubert and his Vienna, page 160

      Sometimes what's in the frame can seem hard to work out, almost intentionally miscomposed; in some early pictures I'm not sure Mapplethorpe always knew the difference. In many, though, he obviously did.

      2017, Leslie Jamison, Robert Atwan, The Best American Essays 2017, page 169

   3. To make up out of the wrong ingredients or the wrong proportions of ingredients.

      To give examples of the way our native regiments are miscomposed. In a certain cavalry regiment there are one and a half squadrons Sikhs, one-half squadron Hindustani Hindus, one-half squadron Hindustani Mahomedans, three-quarter squadron Punjabi Mussalmans, and three-quarter squadron Pathans.

      1904, The United Service Magazine - Volume 30, page 372

      2 more examples

      […] this governor contrived that a bill for Georgia's full reinstatement should be reported from Butler's reconstruction committee which among other "fundamental conditions" prolonged this miscomposed legislature for an additional term of two years, in utter defiance of the State constitution.

      1913, James Schouler, History of the United States of America: 1865-1877., page 169

      Instances of faulty conception and designing of technical devices and mechanisms (12), in appropriate chemical compounds or miscomposed pharmaceutical preparations as well as inadequate control of the edibility of industrialised foods items were classified under the above category having been characterised in a wider sense as «design faults or defects».

      1979, Revue Hellenique de droit international - Volume 32, page 155

   4. To typeset incorrectly.

      It was purposely miscomposed , as a protection against forged labels on bottles from other and inferior distilleries.

      1936, Christopher Sidgwick, German Journey, page 27

      1 more example

      Although almost universally miscomposed, despite one simple rule governing their use , Roman numerals are a neat typographic element . The rule? Always align Roman numerals on the right , never on the left.

      1988, Philip Brady, Using Type Right, page 58