misreform

English

Etymology

mis- +‎ reform

Pronunciation

• (noun) IPA^(key): /ˈmɪsɹəfɔː(ɹ)m/
• (verb) IPA^(key): /mɪsɹəˈfɔː(ɹ)m/

Noun

misreform (plural misreforms)

1. A reform that ends up making things worse.
   • 1958, The Economist - Volume 187, page 583:

     ... whether the party's determination to say that it is going to " abolish the eleven-plus " examination is merely to be a slogan about gradual changes in selection methods, or whether it will herald a serious attempt at educational misreform.

   • 1992, William Warburton, John Knapton, Donald W. Nichol, Pope's literary legacy:

     I give you this hint that you may work up the concluding scene of her life as seraphicly as you can cast over it that sunshine that may be able to dispell all the misreforms that the foregoing had made upon minds really & not pretendly tender for as these last only pride themselves in what they have not they will never be brought to own that an author's address can ravish from them what they think it an honour to pretend to.

   • 1997, Nikolai Biryukov, Victor Sergeyev, Russian Politics in Transition, →ISBN:

     The authors had little to say about the complete absence of institutional transformations in the economy and emphasise sabotage on the part of the nomenklatura as the principal cause for the "misreform".

Verb

misreform (third-person singular simple present misreforms, present participle misreforming, simple past and past participle misreformed)

1. (obsolete) To make a misreform; to reform badly or in error.
   • 1632, T. T., An Appendix To The Whetstone:

     And more then this he foysteth in to his translation the worde necessarie in steed of flagitare videntur, And thus like a bungling botcher he patcheth togither those vncertainties of Cassander to make himselfe and others a deceitfull safegarde of greater comfort and benefit for the soule which he erroneously supposeth rather to be in his misreformed faith them in the Romish.

   • 1773, State Papers: Commencing From The Year MDCXXI, page 402:

     And I do still believe that, as all the errors of your life have proceeded from too great an excess of charity and therefore they may the rather be called the errors of other men than your's, it is posfible you may exercise more of that Christian virtue, towards those misreformed Churches, than their constitution deserves.

   • 1848, John Milton, James Augustus St. John, Charles Richard Sumner, The prose works of John Milton, page 279:

     First, it will be soon manifest to them who know what wise men should know, that the constitution and reformation of a commonwealth, if Ezra and Nehemiah did not misreform, is, like a building, to begin orderly from the foundation thereof, which is marriage and the family, to set arigth first whatever is amiss therein.

Anagrams

• reformism