misgrab

plural misgrabs

1. A failed attempt to grab something.

   I made a misgrab and it touched the saw and flew up.

   1916, Supreme Court Appellate Division Second Department, page 667

   3 more examples

   He hauls in the twenty yards of it in frantic haste, making many a misgrab and getting more excited, I'll warrant, than he ever was with any but his first bear.

   1903, Forest and Stream - Volume 61, page 215

   All this helped, but nevertheless it was a hazardous undertaking. A slip or a misgrab and he would fall under his own engine.

   1938, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine, page 127

   All around was nothing but air, the endless abyss of Virga; a misgrab here would send you on a slow trip around the world, with the birds, bugs, and fish making a moving feast of you along the way.

   2007, Karl Schroeder, Sun of Suns, page 141

2. figurativelyA mistake.

   It is easy for the American visitor to make a “misgrab” here because, blinded by the surface similarities, he fails to take the hidden differences into consideration.

   1964, William J. Danker, Two Worlds Or None: Rediscovering Missions, page 91

   1 more example

   Unfortunately, notwithstanding all his wisdom, he had made a misgrab, for Noah, the chief of the saved, was soon unmasked as a drunken sot who disported with his own daughters.

   2019, Chaz Bufe, Dan Arel, Godless: 150 Years of Disbelief

present singular third person misgrabs · participle present misgrabbing · participle past misgrabbed · past misgrabbed

1. To fail in an attempt to grab something

   […] misgrabbing or catching an apparatus or opponent

   2003, Aaron Rubin, Sports Injuries and Emergencies: A Quick Response Manual, page 130

   2 more examples

   Schliemann misgrabbed his cup to toast the deal, and its toppled plastic cylinder rolled spillessly from side to side in the valley of his tray.

   2007, Geoff Wyss, Tiny Clubs, page 116

   ... it's always some trusting young volunteer who misgrabs a burning wire with his tongs, misturns the thirsty steel and flies in a beautiful ten-metre red arc into the black air

   2019, Jiří Pelán, Bohumil Hrabal. A Full-length Portrait, page 22