Does anyone know of a word that means, to put words in someone's mouth?
The only word I could think of would be to misquote, but that is not exactly what I mean.
An example would be, "Every time I attempted to explain to her what I meant, she purposely misconstrued what I said, as if she was trying to put words in my mouth."
I'm looking for a word that means the act of misstating or misquoting someone, presumably with the intent to distort for their own advantage or motive.
What an interesting question... (and welcome a-Board, billpy!)
i couldn't find anything (which isn't saying much ) but in my searches i did stumble upon this, which is at least tangentially correlated:
metastasis - casual mention of a subject as if it were unimportant; responding to a person's criticism or insult with a riposte that uses or plays on his or her words (rhetoric term)
i thought this was an intriguing twist of the more common meaning of metastasis, which deals with the transfer of cancerous cells to previously healthy sites. it reminds me of a Readers' Digest quote that my mom had displayed above the kitchen sink, where we were all sure to see it often: "Never answer an angry word with an angry word. It's the second one that makes the quarrel"
and BTW, can someone explain what dictionaries mean when they call a term "rhetoric"? are they using rhetoric to indicate that its use would be circumfloribus ?
I didn't know the word "metastasis" had such an alternate meaning. Still, I don't think its what I'm looking for.
Also, I'm hoping to find a single word rather than a phrase to fit the bill, but I may have to settle on "maliciously misquote." Hopefully we'll get lots of responses to this thread and see what shakes out :)
It's not one word but two, but I think you came up with the best answer to your question: "purposely misconstrue." Makes it perfectly clear to me what the person in question was doing, damn her.
What if it just used the mal stem in a shorter form - say, malaquote
By Jove, Jeeves, I do think you've got it. Time to leap out of the tub and run naked down the street, shouting "malaquote"! That and get Faldage to use his connexions at the OED to help propagate the word.
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) but in my searches i did stumble upon this, which is at least tangentially correlated:
