misattend
English edit
Etymology edit
Verb edit
misattend (third-person singular simple present misattends, present participle misattending, simple past and past participle misattended)
- (intransitive) To misunderstand something; to disregard or fail to pay attention.
- 1969, Mark Twain, Henry Huttleston Rogers, Lewis Gaston Leary, Mark Twain's Correspondence with Henry Huttleston Rogers:
- I would have cabled you to withdraw it from the Century, but I didn't, for I was sure I could depend upon Gilder's declining it. If he hasn't done it, please take it away from him and charge him with being drunk and misattending to his duties.
- 1644, J[ohn] M[ilton], chapter XXII, in The Doctrine or Discipline of Divorce: […], 2nd edition, London: [s.n.], →OCLC, book II, page 82:
- They ſhall recover the miſattended vvords of Chriſt to the ſincerity of their true ſenſe from manifold contradictions, and ſhall open them vvith the key of charity.
- 1879, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Parliamentary Papers, volume X, page 145:
- Then how do you account for Mr. Goffin stating that he gave a lesson on Thursday as usual ? — I did not hear the lesson. I must have been misattending if he did give one, because we were all changing.
- 1995, Michael P. French, Ann Polzer Landretti, Attention Deficit and Reading Instruction, page 15:
- From the bottom-up view, the reader with attention deficits may misattend to the salient features of words.
- 2017, Stuart Lowe, Housing Policy Analysis, page 291:
- It is a case of 'epistemic drift' as defined by Kemeny (1999), in which discourses without firm disciplinary roots tend to misattend to facts and jump to misleading conclusions.
- (transitive) To fail to look after properly.
- 1869, John W. Ogle, Timothy Holmes, St. George's Hospital Reports - Volume 4, page 215:
- Soon after this, she removed from my district; and in the year 1861, again, for the eighth time, was pregnant, when she now fell under the care of an unqualified medical man, who had been appointed by a board of guardians to misattend the poor of a large district.
- 1980, Atlantic Provinces Reports, volume 66, page 79:
- However, I cannot leave this subject without lamenting the unfortuate attitude of certain members of the bar to misattend the execution of documents with complete disregard for their code of professional conduct.