misunderstoodadj.n.

a1586 Sir P. Sidney Arcadia (1590) i. iv. sig. C7 Kill the ioy of posteritie, which in your time you may enioy: moued perchance by a mis-understoode Oracle.

1594 R. Carew tr. J. Huarte Exam. Mens Wits xi. 172 Three mis-vnderstood lawes, which they haue learned at all aduentures.

a1732 F. Atterbury Serm. Several Occas. (1734) I. 291 A misunderstood Place of Scripture may overthrow One of the Prime Articles of Faith.

1790 E. Burke Refl. Revol. in France 219 The most dangerous shock that the state ever received through a misunderstood arrangement of religion. View more context for this quotation

1887 E. C. Stedman Victorian Poets xi. 389 America, with her strange..misunderstood yearning for a rightful share of the culture..of the older world.

1892 I. Zangwill Big Bow Myst. 51 The incurable interest of humanity in the Unknown and the Misunderstood.

1931 E. Wenham Domest. Silver v. 75 [Dish-crosses] represent to the English what the misunderstood dish-rings mean to the Irish.

1985 I. Hislop Secret Diary Ld. Gnome 3/3 British convicts bound for Australia run aground owing to a misunderstood command.

2005 L. H. Suid & D. A. Haverstick Stars & Stripes on Screen i. 22 Ultimately, a misunderstood order on the destroyer's bridge results in the destruction of both the pursuer and the pursued.

1841 R. W. Emerson Ess. 1st Ser. (Boston ed.) ii. 47 To be great is to be misunderstood.

1854 J. R. Lowell Jrnl. Italy in Wks. (1890) I. 199 He should take his motto from Bishop Golias's ‘Mihi est propositum in tabernâ mori’, though not in the sufistic sense of that misunderstood Churchman.

1971 Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg) 3 Apr. 5/8 We shall develop a persecution complex and go round moaning that we are misunderstood.

1994 Guardian 7 July ii. 4/3 His discreet portrayal of himself as a humble, misunderstood figure who somehow manages to scratch the bare bones of a living from unpromising soil.

2008 A. McMonagle Liar, Liar 108 Tweaking a blurb he knows by heart, he defends with desperation this misunderstood girl.

1826 J. Bentham in Westm. Rev. 6 484 From non-understoodness or misunderstoodness comes oppositeness to expectation.

1922 O. Wadsley Sand ix. 91 His eyes narrowed in that unreasoning anger which arises so often from that ‘misunderstoodness’ to which passionate and vain natures are so liable.

1986 New York 1 Dec. 148/3 The characters speak, pell-mell, to, at, through, or past one another,..as active misunderstanding and passive misunderstoodness wistfully overlap.

2003 Economist (Electronic ed.) 1 Nov. 52 The elevation of treacly sentiment and womanly misunderstoodness..is still a potent brew.