mispreserve

present singular third person mispreserves · participle present mispreserving · participle past mispreserved · past mispreserved

1. To preserve badly or to preserve something that does not merit preservation.

   The "stars" of Fifty Years of Romance and Research include a native "Rob Roy of Sarawak," Hose's adoring wife Poppy, and a mispreserved giant orangutan head she valiantly delivered to Cambridge's Dr. Duckworth.

   1990, James A. Boon, Affinities and Extremes, page 199

   2 more examples

   There is no positive evidence of the fact, but that proposition was raised is the exact reason why it is provided in the election law that you can't open a ballot box and can't take any cognizance of ballots that have been so mispreserved.

   1917, United States Congressional Serial Set - Volume 7300, page 54

   Here was Lancashire heavily weighted again with the exuberance of the Victorians, with pictures of ladies made of the smoothest china, of yearning children, of dear little cats, and dogs, and donkeys , with all the oil paint sunsets and sticky landscapes, the only excellent thing about them being the varnish which had mispreserved them, and deprived contemporary artists of all that wall space.

   1936, Walter Wilkinson, Puppets Through Lancashire, page 81