(For the Spaniards, the Czechs were guilty of gesture politics that misfired).
Watching from the back, near the tea urn and trestle-table piled with leaflets, Bagehot wondered if the AV demonstration had not misfired: after four rounds of counting, victory went to Meat Feast, presumably annoying quite a few in the room, starting with the vegetarians.
Unfortunately, his efforts to reshape the economy have often misfired.
Other parts of industrial policy have misfired, such as attempts to support domestic technology by setting standards.
One of Mr Carman's colleagues, Anthony Scrivener, said that watching him cross-examine was "like watching a wise old owl devouring a rodent".Just occasionally these tactics of roughing up claimants misfired.
An attempt to embarrass Mr Harper misfired when the prime minister, without consulting his own party's constitutional experts, abruptly offered to renounce a provision that allows the federal government to override Supreme Court decisions.In mid-campaign, the police launched an investigation into insider trading following the leaking of an announcement to be made by the finance minister.
Once money-spinners, their prized formulae have misfired since 2009, losing money in four of the past five years.
While the world's largest carmaker has misfired and sputtered for the past couple of years, the profitable General Motors Acceptance Corp (GMAC) just about kept things on the road.
But in the depths of despair a year into a yearned-for premiership that had misfired on most fronts, Mr Brown turned again to his former friend.
With this portentous new book he has misfired.
In 1957, in an essay called "The White Negro", he recommended that white Americans should live like inner-city blacks, hip and cool as cats on the edge of violence, rather than fall into the deadness of post-war conformity.The shock tactics sometimes misfired badly.
