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Misdirection   Listen
noun
Misdirection  n.  
1.
The act of directing wrongly, or the state of being so directed.
2.
(Law) An error of a judge in charging the jury on a matter of law.
3.
The direction of another's attention to an unimportant place or matter, for the purpose of being able to perform an action undetected; as, misdirection is an important part of a magician's art.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Misdirection" Quotes from Famous Books



... result of an enthusiasm for classical literature was hastened and heightened by the misdirection of the powers of art. The imagination of the age was actively set to realize these objects of Pagan belief; and all the most exalted faculties of man, which, up to that period, had been employed in the service of Faith, were now transferred to the service of Fiction. The ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... have no sense-organs for its appreciation, or because (like the ether) it is too uniformly omnipresent for our ken, is to wrest our advantages and privileges from their proper use and apply them to our own misdirection." . . . "I am one of those who think that the methods of science are not so limited in their scope as has been thought: that they can be applied much more widely, and that the psychic region can be studied and brought under law too. Allow us anyhow to ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... temporarily smothered by her frantic desire to advance her husband's career. We are forced to sympathize with this guilty pair, wicked as they {188} are, because we are made to feel that they are not naturally criminals, that they are swept into crime by the misdirection of energies which, if directed along happier lines, might have been praiseworthy. Macbeth, vigorous and imaginative, has a poet's or conqueror's yearning toward a larger fullness of life, experience, joy. It is the woeful misdirection of this splendid ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken

... the manifestations of the sexual life of the child increase from year to year, although not always by continuous gradations. Thus, in consequence of misdirection, sexual manifestations may arise in the child, and then, if these evil communications are cut off, such manifestations may cease. But, altogether apart from deliberate seduction, we may observe periods of more rapid and periods of ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... of its first beat instinctively longs for the beautiful...." We strive for the right and the true: it is circumstance that thrusts wrong upon us. What is popularly called sin these philosophers call error, accident, inexperience, indecision, misdirection, imperfection, disharmony; but they will not allow the presence in the human heart of a malign force which asserts itself against God, and against the order of His universe. That principle which is darkness in the mind, perverseness in the ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... interests which have been concerned in the traffic affected by the change of gauge at Gloucester, have fully borne out the statement of the evils experienced, more especially with reference to the loss, delay, and misdirection of goods. The principal Railway Companies north of Birmingham have also made strong representations as to the obstacle thrown in the way of a proper development of the traffic by the break of gauge; an obstacle ...
— Report of the Railway Department of the Board of Trade on the • Samuel Laing

... there now immolated upon the shrine of superstition and priestcraft, in our very midst, in the assumption that man only has a right to the pulpit, and that if a woman enters it she disobeys God; making woman believe in the misdirection of her vocation, and that it is of divine authority that she should be thus bound. Believe it not, my sisters. In this same epistle the word "prophesying" should be "preaching"—"preaching godliness," etc. On the occasion of the first miracle which it is said Christ wrought, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... civilization should laugh him out of court. The US who are flourishing, or pining, as the case may be, in the British West Indies—by favour of the Colonial Office on the former hypothesis, or, on the second, through the misdirection of their own faculties—do not, and, in the very nature of things, cannot in any race take the lead of any set of men endowed with virile attributes, the conditions of the contest ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... being mere bodily impulses, and being all liable to excess or misdirection, need the control of the will, and of the principles of action by which the will is ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody

... expect to touch the former we can influence the latter. It is mischievous because by fighting against a tendency which is not only inevitable but altogether beneficial, we blind ourselves to the advance of civilisation and risk the misdirection of all our energies. How far this blindness may be carried we see in the false patriotism of those who in the decline of the birth-rate fancy they see the ruin of their own particular country, oblivious of the fact that we are concerned with ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... authority of law, the Government was saved from overthrow. I am not aware that a dollar of the public funds thus confided without authority of law to unofficial persons was either lost or wasted, although apprehensions of such misdirection occurred to me as objections to those extraordinary proceedings, and were ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... spade-workers are so silly," said the Duke, "is in the misdirection of your efforts. You spend thousands of pounds of money, and Heaven knows how much dynamic force of brain power and personal energy, in trying to elect or displace this or that man, whereas you could gain your ends so much more simply by making use of the men as you find them. ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki

... and by the magic of his dexterous hands, had found the clue to the maze, so that all was proceeding well, though slowly, when the study door opened, and Harry's voice was heard in a last good night to his father. Mary's eyes looked wistful, and one misdirection of her winder tightened an ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... unless great care is exercised by the husband, will induce painful coitus, and may bring about sterility by favoring the formation of a copulation sac outside of the axis of the uterine canal, and consequently misdirection of ...
— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... These instances of misdirection, which have been in times past more numerous than now, although two of the most recent and most signal have occurred in the same county (Lincolnshire), inevitably tend to the destruction of copies, and so far illustrate our remarks on the causes of ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... so, my Carlos. Well I understand This fiery passion: 'tis the misdirection Of feelings pure and noble in themselves. The queen belonged to thee: the king, thy father, Despoiled thee of her—yet till now thou hast Been modestly distrustful of thy claims. Philip, perhaps, was worthy of her! ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller



Words linked to "Misdirection" :   revision, alteration, instruction, distraction, mismanagement, commission, misdirect, direction, charge



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