Word.ws English Dictionary

mismirror

mismirror verb: to provide a distorted reflection of.

Verb

mismirror (third-person singular simple present mismirrors, present participle mismirroring, simple past and past participle mismirrored)

  1. To provide a distorted reflection of
    • Each time, Helga's vulnerable and defensively haughty self approaches a potential mirror and is, or perceives itself to be, mismirrored.1997, Elizabeth Abel, Barbara Christian, Helene Moglen, Female Subjects in Black and White, page 258
    • The interpersonal self thus comes into being as a result of experiences with interpersonal mirroring or mismirroring, that is, approval or disapproval.2014, Marylou Lionells, John Fiscalini, Carola Mann, Handbook of Interpersonal Psychoanalysis

Examples of mismirror in a sentence

  • In the second version the mother misreads (mismirrors) her baby's messages because she cannot tolerate the baby's sensuous/sexual arousal, or its pain and neediness, or its desperation.2014, Lewis Aron, Adrienne Harris, Relational Psychoanalysis, Volume 4: Expansion of Theory, page 336:
  • One mirror must mirror another; each mirror mismirrors the other.2015, Robert Chandler, Irina Mashinski, Boris Dralyuk, The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry:

Forms of mismirror

third-person singular presentmismirrors
present participlemismirroring
past participlemismirrored
pastmismirrored

Origin of mismirror

From mis- + mirror.

Questions about mismirror

What does mismirror mean?
Mismirror means to provide a distorted reflection of.
How do you use mismirror in a sentence?
In the second version the mother misreads (mismirrors) her baby's messages because she cannot tolerate the baby's sensuous/sexual arousal, or its pain and neediness, or its desperation.
What part of speech is mismirror?
Mismirror is a verb.
What is the past tense of mismirror?
The past tense of mismirror is mismirrored.

Words near mismirror in the dictionary

  1. mismigrate
  2. mismigrated
  3. mismigration
  4. mismigrations
  5. misminded
  6. mismirror
  7. mismirrored
  8. mismirroring
  9. mismirrors
  10. mismix
  11. mismixed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: mismirror (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “mismirror.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/mismirror. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.