misgrab

noun

1. A failed attempt to grab something.

   “He hauls in the twenty yards of it in frantic haste, making many a misgrab and getting more excited, I'll warrant, than he ever was with any but his first bear.”

   “I made a misgrab and it touched the saw and flew up.”

   “All this helped, but nevertheless it was a hazardous undertaking. A slip or a misgrab and he would fall under his own engine.”

   “All around was nothing but air, the endless abyss of Virga; a misgrab here would send you on a slow trip around the world, with the birds, bugs, and fish making a moving feast of you along the way.”

2. (figuratively)A mistake.

   “It is easy for the American visitor to make a “misgrab” here because, blinded by the surface similarities, he fails to take the hidden differences into consideration.”

   “Unfortunately, notwithstanding all his wisdom, he had made a misgrab, for Noah, the chief of the saved, was soon unmasked as a drunken sot who disported with his own daughters.”

verb

1. To fail in an attempt to grab something

   “[…] misgrabbing or catching an apparatus or opponent”

   “Schliemann misgrabbed his cup to toast the deal, and its toppled plastic cylinder rolled spillessly from side to side in the valley of his tray.”

   “... it's always some trusting young volunteer who misgrabs a burning wire with his tongs, misturns the thirsty steel and flies in a beautiful ten-metre red arc into the black air”