misreflect

Verb

misreflect (third-person singular simple present misreflects, present participle misreflecting, simple past and past participle misreflected)

1. To mirror inaccurately; to reflect a distorted image of.
   • To the censorious world, who like false glasses Mingling their own irregular figures, Misreflect the object, I fhall appear Some finful woman, sold to infamy.1661, Sir Samuel Tuke, The Adventures of Five Hours
   • I could see no more of her face that the sharp bridge of her nose. Except what I caught misreflected in the hair dryer – her enlarged ear.1968, John Irving, Setting Free the Bears
2. To present an inaccurate description of; to give an inaccurate impression of.
   • Lest this record misreflect what the testimony was, I understood that the witness was talking in that percentage about failures, which would of course include dialing errors.1963, California Public Utilities Commission, Investigation on the Commission's Own Motion Into the Rates, Tolls, Rules, Charges, Operations, Practices, Contracts, Service and Facilities of the...
   • The final sentence of the policy statement appears also to misreflect the emphasis of the Act.1971, California. Office of the Attorney General, Proposed Guidelines for the Preparation and Evaluation of Environmental Impact Statements Under the California Environmental Quality Act of 1970...
3. To think about in a distorted way
   • The gist of this horribly repugnant scene is that a person can be forced, because of the threat of unbearable pain, to misreflect upon his perceptions.1990, Reinhardt Grossmann, The Fourth Way: A Theory of Knowledge, page 117