misimagination

plural misimaginations

1. countableuncountableWrong imagination; delusion.

   It is not easy to say what it is to misimagine another person. It is easier to give a useful description of some other kinds of misimagination.

   2006, Shaun Nichols, The Architecture of the Imagination, page 59

   3 more examples

   Vnto which their misimaginations I say, that it is not one mans worke; although it were Iulius Caesar himselfe, to reduce a whole armie into diuers forms of battle with celeritic when they are to march in the enimies Countrey, or to fight with the Enemie, but that the same must be of necessitie perfourmed by diuers Chiefetains, and higher and lower officers of the armie;

   1595, Sir John Smythe, Instructions, Observations, and Orders Mylitarie., page 84

   Who can without indignation look upon the prodigies which this misimagination produces in that other sex; to the shame of their husbands, the scorn of religion, the damnation of their own souls?

   1618, Joseph Hall, The Righteous Mammon (sermon)

   When politics, with all the misimaginations of self it implies, is no longer a strong enough figure of antagonism, the old dialectic can only be transformed into a confrontation between the solitary self and death.

   1971, Thomas R. Edwards, Imagination and Power: A Study of Poetry on Public Themes, page 135