misrevise

English

Etymology

From mis- +‎ revise.

Verb

misrevise (third-person singular simple present misrevises, present participle misrevising, simple past and past participle misrevised)

1. To revise in a manner that makes something worse.
   • 1988, Karen Vaught-Alexander, Contexts which Connect Writers, Readers, Texts, page 53:

     Inexperienced or ineffective reader-writers often misrevise their drafts, their plans and goals.

   • 2021, John C. Poirier, The Invention of the Inspired Text:

     In 1789, the latter-day Neoplatonist Thomas Taylor (1789: 2.282) published a translation of On the Cave of the Nymphs, in which he rendered θεόπνοος as "nourished by a divine spirit" —a rendering that arguably captures some of the sense of a life-giving force. (Unfortunately [and inexplicably], Taylor [1823: 177] misrevised his translation of θεόπνοος, some thirty years later, to “inspired by divinity.")

   • 2022, Robert Lowell, Memoirs:

     Not all of Ransom's changes are disastrous, some improve, almost all show surprising ways in which passages can be turned into variations. We are given a thousand opportunities to misrevise.