miscompose

English

Etymology

Verb

miscompose (third-person singular simple present miscomposes, present participle miscomposing, simple past and past participle miscomposed)

To compose badly.
1. To produce a defective product or outcome.
  - 1866, Thomas Hardy, Nature's Indifference:
    And, grieved that lives so matched should miscompose, Each mourn the double waste; and question dare To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows, Why those high-purposed children never were: What will she answer?
  - 1929, Walter Shaw Sparrow, George Stubbs and Ben Marshall, page 61:
    […] where much ridicule is directed against the old painter who wrote as Observator; ridicule miscomposed by the editor, Thomas Burgeland Johnson, who wrote also now and then under the pseudonym T. H. Needham.
  - 1944, Aurobindo Ghose, The Life Divine - Volume 2, page 169:
    Its limitation of Knowledge constitutes by incompleteness, but also by openness to error, an Ignorance. In dealing with actualities it may misobserve, misuse, miscreate; in dealing with possibilities it may miscompose, miscombine, misapply, misplace; in its dealings with truths revealed to it it may deform, misrepresent, disharmonise.
  - 2011, Christopher Entwistle, Noël Adams, Gems of Heaven:
    A study of the script reveals spelling mistakes and miscomposed letters, due to the incompetence of the engraver (and/or the incorrectness of his model).
2. To arrange an artistic work in a disharmonious way.
  - 1985, Charles Osborne, Schubert and his Vienna, page 160:
    The Leipzig Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung said that the favourite composer of the Viennese 'has in this case positively miscomposed', but the London Harmonicon considered that the Fantasy possessed 'merit far above the common order'.
  - 1988, Stephen Brown, The sense of music, page 249:
    We could easily miscompose this so that the time-scales of the two hands matched "better":
  - 2017, Leslie Jamison, Robert Atwan, The Best American Essays 2017, page 169:
    Sometimes what's in the frame can seem hard to work out, almost intentionally miscomposed; in some early pictures I'm not sure Mapplethorpe always knew the difference. In many, though, he obviously did.
3. To make up out of the wrong ingredients or the wrong proportions of ingredients.
  - 1904, The United Service Magazine - Volume 30, page 372:
    To give examples of the way our native regiments are miscomposed. In a certain cavalry regiment there are one and a half squadrons Sikhs, one-half squadron Hindustani Hindus, one-half squadron Hindustani Mahomedans, three-quarter squadron Punjabi Mussalmans, and three-quarter squadron Pathans.
  - 1913, James Schouler, History of the United States of America: 1865-1877., page 169:
    […] this governor contrived that a bill for Georgia's full reinstatement should be reported from Butler's reconstruction committee which among other "fundamental conditions" prolonged this miscomposed legislature for an additional term of two years, in utter defiance of the State constitution.
  - 1979, Revue Hellenique de droit international - Volume 32, page 155:
    Instances of faulty conception and designing of technical devices and mechanisms (12), in appropriate chemical compounds or miscomposed pharmaceutical preparations as well as inadequate control of the edibility of industrialised foods items were classified under the above category having been characterised in a wider sense as «design faults or defects».
4. To typeset incorrectly.
  - 1936, Christopher Sidgwick, German Journey, page 27:
    It was purposely miscomposed , as a protection against forged labels on bottles from other and inferior distilleries.
  - 1988, Philip Brady, Using Type Right, page 58:
    Although almost universally miscomposed, despite one simple rule governing their use , Roman numerals are a neat typographic element . The rule? Always align Roman numerals on the right , never on the left.