misconfide

Etymology

From mis- + confide.

misconfide means to confide in someone who does not deserve such trust. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 82 out of 100.

Why “misconfide” is a great word

MISCONFIDE — [Verb] To place one's trust and confidences in a person who ultimately proves unworthy of that intimate faith. From the English prefix mis- ("badly, wrongly") + confide, from Latin confidere ("to trust fully"). Unlike "confide," a neutral act of sharing private matters, or "mistrust," a broad withholding of faith, to misconfide is to perform the specific, tragic error of depositing a secret into a vault that will not hold. It is the hushed admission in a darkened bar that becomes public ammunition, the earnest letter entrusted to a curator of gossip, the handing over of a fragile, live thing to careless hands—a solitary gamble against the cold odds of human character.

verb

To confide in someone who does not deserve such trust.“Though nothing can be more illegal than misconfiding to the gaoler, by the second clause of the act relating to the management of gaols—the 5th and 6th William IV,— a power which is taken from the local magistrates themselves by the Abolition Act, namely, that of punishing the apprentices; yet a still more arbitrary and unjust authority is given by it to one local magistrate, namely, to treat a re”