mismumble

English

Etymology

mis- +‎ mumble

Verb

mismumble (third-person singular simple present mismumbles, present participle mismumbling, simple past and past participle mismumbled)

1. To mumble the wrong words.
   • 1917, Harry Alverson Franck, Vagabonding Down the Andes, page 446:

     He was dictating dialogues between two American boys, and forcing his students to learn to mismumble them; just such expressions as we have all, no doubt, heard American boys use to each other daily.

   • 2016, John Leonard, “Tittivillus”, in Think of the World: Collected Poems:

     In choir and cloister, gathering up dropped Syllables, mismumbled words dislodged From the liturgy by sinful clerics.

   • 2019, Opie Percival Read, Bolanyo:

     In a side remark intended for me, and which struck me like a shaft, Culpepper, as vain a fellow as ever mismumbled an author's lines, remarked to Miss Hatch that an elephant would stretch his chain to reach a bonbon.