misimagine

present singular third person misimagines · participle present misimagining · participle past misimagined · past misimagined

1. To imagine incorrectly; to form an inaccurate mental image of.

   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

   2 more examples

   When the fact of their being ice, and not snow, is fully realized, still persons are apt to misimagine their appearance; for they are by no means smooth like our frozen lakes and rivers, but present a very unequal surface, undulating, furrowed, and broken.

   1892, Thomas Osmond Summers, Switzerland: Historical and Descriptive, page 110

   The stupidity, parochialism, and greed in the international mismanagement of the whole nuclear challenge should not tempt us to misimagine the circumstances of the bomb's first “use.”

   1990, Paul Fussell, Killing, in Verse and Prose, and Other Essays, page 36