misoccupy

Verb

misoccupy (third-person singular simple present misoccupies, present participle misoccupying, simple past and past participle misoccupied)

1. To occupy with something inappropriate; to focus or spend on something unworthy.
   • It may well be supposed that these grave religious writers would look on it as a profanation to waste valuable ink and parchment, and misoccupy their own precious time, in perpetuating the useless, heathenish, and often lewd fictions, which they would gladly see banished from the memory of the...1861 Spetember, “Relics of Early Celtic Literature”, in The Dublin University Magazine: A Literary and Political Journal, volume 58, number 345, page 354
   • Let them not be idle, or misoccupied.1880, B. Solymos, Desert Life: Recollections of an Expedition in the Soudan, page 90
2. To fill with something inappropriate; to provide the wrong contents for.
   • Desert you the misoccupied chair of justice arbitrator, the position that should be occupied by honor and contaminate not the air of heaven with the name of liberty, freedom and justice befouled by your construction.1905, Emma Florence Langdon, The Cripple Creek Strike, page 165
   • He deplored the fact that Chambers rather than someone like Thomas Sandby had been commissioned to build Somerset House, and he also audaciously argued that architects like Chambers had been more interested in filling their pockets than in promoting the grand style by causing the interior of...1981, The life and art of James Barry, page 139