misrevise

present singular third person misrevises · participle present misrevising · participle past misrevised · past misrevised

1. To revise in a manner that makes something worse.

   Inexperienced or ineffective reader-writers often misrevise their drafts, their plans and goals.

   1988, Karen Vaught-Alexander, Contexts which Connect Writers, Readers, Texts, page 53

   2 more examples

   In 1789, the latter-day Neoplatonist Thomas Taylor (1789: 2.282) published a translation of On the Cave of the Nymphs, in which he rendered θεόπνοος as "nourished by a divine spirit" —a rendering that arguably captures some of the sense of a life-giving force. (Unfortunately [and inexplicably], Taylor [1823: 177] misrevised his translation of θεόπνοος, some thirty years later, to “inspired by divinity.")

   2021, John C. Poirier, The Invention of the Inspired Text

   Not all of Ransom's changes are disastrous, some improve, almost all show surprising ways in which passages can be turned into variations. We are given a thousand opportunities to misrevise.

   2022, Robert Lowell, Memoirs