mismumble

present singular third person mismumbles · participle present mismumbling · participle past mismumbled · past mismumbled

1. To mumble the wrong words.

   In choir and cloister, gathering up dropped Syllables, mismumbled words dislodged From the liturgy by sinful clerics.

   2016, John Leonard, “Tittivillus”, in Think of the World: Collected Poems

   2 more examples

   He was dictating dialogues between two American boys, and forcing his students to learn to mismumble them; just such expressions as we have all, no doubt, heard American boys use to each other daily.

   1917, Harry Alverson Franck, Vagabonding Down the Andes, page 446

   In a side remark intended for me, and which struck me like a shaft, Culpepper, as vain a fellow as ever mismumbled an author's lines, remarked to Miss Hatch that an elephant would stretch his chain to reach a bonbon.

   2019, Opie Percival Read, Bolanyo