misexecute

English

Etymology

mis- +‎ execute

Verb

misexecute (third-person singular simple present misexecutes, present participle misexecuting, simple past and past participle misexecuted)

1. (transitive) To execute or carry out improperly.
   • 1921, John James Sullivan, American Corporations, page 208:

     It is not going too far to say that if an agent is acting within the general scope of his work, even if he oversteps his orders or misexecutes them, the corporation which employs him to do such work is liable for a tort committed by him thereby.

   • 1966, American Universities Field Staff, Reports Service: Southwest Asia series, page 46:

     Unfortunately, it is the last man in the chain that counts. He is the one who executes, or misexecutes, policy.

   • 1982, Michael J. Woods, Aristotle's Eudemian Ethics, Books I, II, and VIII, page 153:

     Thus someone may misexecute what he has decided to do after deliberation through failure to attend sufficiently closely to his actions, as when a surgeon fails to notice what sort of incision he is making.

   • 1987, Ronald M. Baecker, William A. S. Buxton, Readings in Human-computer Interaction, page 290:

     This inconsistency caused one learner to misexecute one and then the other of these two operations in a dismal cycle of negative transfer as illustrated in Table 6.

   • 1987, Michael Frese, Eberhard Ulich, Wolfgang Dzida, Psychological Issues of Human-computer Interaction in the Workplace, page 268:

     When the user misexecutes a correct suggestion from the help system, it is natural for the user to consider the possibility that the help system was wrong.