mismeet

English

Etymology

From mis- +‎ meet.

Verb

mismeet (third-person singular simple present mismeets, present participle mismeeting, simple past and past participle mismet)

1. To come together but fail to properly communicate or connect in positive ways.
   • 1992, Maurice Friedman, Religion and Psychology: A Dialogical Approach, page 45:

     Perhaps more than any other it illustrates both the meeting and the mismeeting of religion and psychology.

   • 1993, Kalman Yaron, “Martin Buber”, in Prospects, volume 23, page 138:

     The noble task of the teacher is to be attentive to his students, in order not to 'mismeet' the graced occasions of dialogue, as already noted.

   • 2003, Dennis Sidney Ross, God in Our Relationships, page 73:

     Have you ever tried to talk with a stranger — on a blind date or one-on-one with a business associate — but could not find the words? We mismeet in relatively superficial and trivial conditions as well as in crucial ones. When we mismeet, I can run only one side—my side—of the dialogue.

   • 2010, Terry Whiting, “Review: Considering Animals in Emergency Response”, in Society & Animals, volume 18, number 3, page 329:

     There is scattered discussion of how society values different species of animals differently—specifically, companion animals, wild animals, and food animals. This classification is nearly identical to the one Zygmunt Bauman uses in his examination of how we treat nonpersons in our society: how pets are met and included in our society; how wild animals are unmet, recognized as animals but outside our society; and how food animals are mismet and evicted from society.

   • 2014 August 29, S Holmes, “Crash: The Ensemble Film that Crosses cultural Borders”, in The Darling Diaries:

     Crash is an ensemble film “varying in scope from an ensemble of characters who may meet or 'mismeet' in the same city or suburb” (Sim 2012, pp. 113).

2. To fail to properly satisfy or comply with.
   • 1994, John Fiscalini, “Narcissism and coparticipant inquiry: Explorations in contemporary interpersonal psychoanalysis”, in Contemporary Psychoanalysis, volume 30, number 4:

     In such pathological relatedness, the child's archaic security needs (which are developmentally immature and of a grandiose and idealizing nature) either go unmet or are mismet.

   • 2014, Gerald Stechler, “Infancy research: A contribution to self psychology”, in Joseph D. Lichtenberg, Samuel Kaplan, editors, Reflections on Self Psychology, page 47:

     These may be typified by situations in which the affect, plan, expectancy, need state, communication, or other function of the baby is unmet or mismet by the parent or caregiver.