Dictionary

misdecipher en · VERB

Etymology

From mis- + decipher.

Meanings

1. To decipher incorrectly.
   • Spinden completely misdeciphers this I. S. He gives two variant readings, both based upon incorrect decipherments of the terminal date, as follows: 1938, Sylvanus Griswold Morley, The Inscriptions of Petén - Volume 3, page 128:
   • Then a number of these mistakes are corrected and lines necessary for sense recovered by modern editors from the previous editions themselves, which effectually shows that the plays were transcribed, and that these mistakes were largely made from misdeciphering the manuscript, as no printer, however bad, could possibly have made them if he had print to copy from. 1881, George Gould (of Bermondsey.), Corrigenda and Explanations of the Text of Shakspere, page 53:
   • I don't know how people misdecipher the loving beats of a heart 2019, Saroja Krishnamurthy, “A Mother's Thought”, in Sending Love to Mom, page 87:
   • The supplementary puzzles, like the half-burned note whose message we decipher (or misdecipher) in Death in Ecstasy, do not further the main investigation, and can send us down a blind alley or after a red herring. 1983, Essays on Detective Fiction, page 37:

Forms