Other forms: misquoted, misquoting, misquotes
To misquote is to report somebody's words wrongly. Misquote the report, badly misquoted, misquote him deliberately.
The famous quotations are mostly misquotations — nobody said play it again, Sam, and the words attributed to Voltaire about defending your right to speak were written by his biographer. A misquote spreads faster than its correction.
1verbmisquoteTo report somebody's words wrongly.
“The minister complained that the newspaper had misquoted him.”
misquote is a misreporting.
Medieval Latin
quotāre
Old French
coter
Middle English
quoten
English
quote
English, today
misquote
Built from
From mis- + quote. quote comes from Middle English quoten, from Old French coter, from Medieval Latin quotāre, from quotus. From Middle English quoten, coten (“to mark (a book) with chapter numbers or marginal references”), from Old French coter, from Medieval Latin quotāre (“to distinguish by numbers, number chapters”), itself from Latin quotus (“which, what number (in sequence)”), from quot (“how many”) and related to quis (“who”). The sense developed via “to give as a reference, to cite as an authority” to “to copy out exact words” (since 1680); the business sense “to state the price of a commodity” (1866) revives the etymological meaning. The noun, in the sense of “quotation,” is attested from 1885; see also usage note, below.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA