mischeck

Verb

mischeck (third-person singular simple present mischecks, present participle mischecking, simple past and past participle mischecked)

1. To enter a check mark inaccurately.
   • Naturally, especially when they first join the Knighthood, some children who have always been careless about the truth will continue to be so and will mischeck their charts.1925, National Parent-teacher - Volume 20, page 660
   • The June 1975 form had the Indefinite box checked; the January 1976 had the Never box checked. The checking of these boxes is not significant enough to deny benefits and could equally be mischecked by a nurse or secretary in the doctor's office.1977, United Glass and Ceramic Workers of North America, Arbitration Cases, page 127
2. To fail to inspect accurately.
   • This is the second squadron pay roll you've mischecked today.1944, Story - Volumes 25-26, page 72
   • Perpetual inventory records are meaningless if a clerk mischecks the merchandise or places the wrong item code number on the receiving ticket.1952, Frank Wordley Tuppeny, Inventory Control Techniques for a Grocery Warehouse, page 6
3. To incorrectly mark an item when it is checked so that it does not go to the right place or is not returned to the correct person.
   • Suspicions were excited by our baggage, especially one, a strange trunk, mischecked as Mrs. Numan, at Macon.1869, John Simpson Wilson, The Dead of the Synod of Georgia, page 366
   • I may state that to add to our discomforts in a new place, the Northern Pacific Railroad mischecked our Saratoga trunk, containing all my wife's apparel, that of my little girl and some of my own, besides articles of peerless worth to ourselves, and had it not been for Mrs. Moore's (Helena)...1887 January, Rev. John Reid, Jr., “Great Falls, Montana: Descriptive Account of a Large and Wholly New Field”, in The Church at Home and Abroad, volume 1, number 1, page 33

Noun

IPA/ˈmɪstʃɛk/

mischeck (plural mischecks)

1. A check mark that was made inaccurately.
   • Checking when done had been so badly done that more time of clerks was wasted erasing mischecks than would have been required to do the whole correctly in the beginning.1894, Cynthia E. Cleveland, Democratic Campaign Book, page 201
   • Carelessness may be manifested in unduly brief replies to open questions or projective stimuli, and in hasty reading of closed questions, resulting in mischecks or random responses or position habits. It is likely that carelessness is substantially attributable to the particular conditions of...1968, Gardner Lindzey, Elliot Aronson, The Handbook of Social Psychology: Research methods, page 237
2. A check pattern that has an error in it.
   • […]and these looms ran continuously, automatically changing from an almost empty bobbin to a filled bobbin, making no mischecks in the pattern, or mispicks from a moving filling thread.1910, Textile World - Volume 39, page 400
3. An instance of checking or inspecting that was inaccurate.
   • Actually some vulsum females were admixed in paratype specimens, certainly by careless mischeck of vein tc 2.1995, Esakia, page 190