What is That Word?

I fancy myself a wordsmith, in that I write these columns, and I have written a couple of (unpublished) books.  Therefore, my topic for this week concerns a word that always seems to be either misused, or mispronounced.  It turns out that it is neither, but I dislike its use whenever I hear it or read it.  The word is 'misperception."

When I was growing up and going to school, and to college, whenever someone did not understand something and gave an incomplete or inaccurate definition of  it, we said that they misconceived what it was or what it meant. It was a misconception of the facts.

Nowadays, that word has been almost wholly replaced by a close sound-alike word,  misperception. In fact, I so rarely hear misconception used any more that I decided to look up the definition of both words to see which is correct.  Here they are:

            1. mis•per•cep•tion (ˌmɪs pərˈsɛp ʃən)
                n. a false or incorrect perception

            2. misconception [ˌmɪskənˈsɛpʃən]

               n. a false or mistaken view, opinion, or attitude

Hmmm, that wasn't very definitive, was it?  They're pretty close, but the first concerns the senses, while the second has to do with the mind.  And even more interesting, they are not synonymous.  That is, you cannot substitute one for the other, even though the definitions look almost identical.

Now, that brings up another question in my mind... Were we using the wrong word all those years ago?  I swear that I never heard or saw the word 'misperception' until a few years ago.  Maybe it's one of those newly conceived words that appear in the OED every year.  (Kind of like a word that a good friend of mine uses frequently, 'flustrating', a combination of  'flustered' and 'frustrating')

Whatever the source, I guess I'm going to have to learn to live with the misconception that I misperceived the correct word when I saw or heard it, but I reserve the right to think 'misconception' as a substitute; it just makes me more comfortable.