missignify

present singular third person missignifies · participle present missignifying · participle past missignified · past missignified

1. To signify falsely; to give the appearance of something that is not true.

   It was unconsciounable that the sign should missignify, the costume deceive.

   1996, David Cressy, “Gender Trouble and Cross-Dressing in Early Modern England”, in Journal of British Studies, volume 35, number 4, page 442

   2 more examples

   These are, then, (dis) simulators, subjects who missignify, who abuse signs for their own pleasure.

   1999, Josiah Blackmore, Gregory S. Hutcheson, Queer Iberia, page 89

   But they are signs which, on the one hand, missignify what causes them and, on the other, cause that which, as signs, they deny.

   2003, Brian Donnelly, The Socialist Émigré: Marxism and the Later Tillich, page 45