mispursue

present singular third person mispursues · participle present mispursuing · participle past mispursued · past mispursued

1. To pursue in the wrong way.

   Such struggle is mispursued when one tries to establish one's viewpoint as uniquely true and to exclude the other's as simply false.

   1996, John Richardson, Nietzsche's System, page 189

   2 more examples

   A study, complete with statistics and history, of the American legal profession as it has been pursued and mispursued in the past couple of hundred years.

   1954, Saturday Review - Volume 37, page 36

   Also, I should have thought that, for Aquinas, all want and pursue happiness, but only the wise want and pursue what happiness consists in: the unwise want and pursue but do not attain happiness, because they are under a misapprehension about what it consists in (e.g., they think it consists in riches, or honor, or the delights of the flesh, or ...), and so “mispursue” happiness, by pursuing things which won't in fact, if attained, bring them happiness (although the mispursuers of happiness think they will).

   2015, Christopher Hughes, Aquinas on Being, Goodness, and God