misapplied

Of all the misused words in the lexicon of punditocracy, “courageous” is easily the word most often misapplied.

In this he was certainly superior, that he neither mistook nor misapplied his own.

In rebuking it James unconsciously retracts the misapplied Pauline principle itself.

He seems to think that, if a method has been misapplied, therefore the method itself is necessarily erroneous.