Misquoting

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The practice of citing someone’s words inaccurately or out of context often leading to distortion of their intended message
2. The event in which statements made by an individual are reproduced incorrectly, resulting in a misunderstanding of their original meaning
3. The act of repeating another's speech incorrectly, causing an alteration of the original meaning

Etymology: Misquoting is a compound of two English pieces: the prefix "mis-", from Old English, meaning wrongly or badly, and "quote". The prefix has been part of English since Anglo-Saxon times, so the newer half is the one with the longer journey. "Quote" descends from Latin "quot", "how many", and a medieval Latin verb "quotare", which meant to divide a text into numbered sections, as in marking chapters or verses. That sense of numbering and marking is the thread that leads to the modern idea of pointing to a passage. From there the word passed into Old French as "coter", meaning to mark or annotate in the margin, and into Middle English as "quoten", where it meant to mark a reference or note a passage. Only later did "quote" come to mean repeating someone's words, so the verb's original job was marking a text rather than reproducing speech. Joined to "mis-", the result describes the act of repeating a passage wrongly, which is why the word carries the sense of distortion as well as simple error.

Synonyms: misrepresentation, distortion

Antonyms: quoting, citing