Idioms

construe

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construe (something) as (something)

To view or interpret something in a particular way. Although I believe that he's innocent, I can see how one could easily construe his actions as a crime. Lucy is trying to construe this as a misunderstanding on our part when, the reality is, she lied to all of us! Hey, don't try to construe me as the bad guy here just because I turned them into the police. They were, in fact, breaking the law!
See also: construe
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

construe something as something

to interpret something to mean something. Please do not construe this as criticism. We mistakenly construed her comments as positive.
See also: construe
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
See also:
References in periodicals archive
Expert witnesses don't just help construe claim terms but also provide scientific opinions concerning many issues during patent litigation, for example, whether an invention is obvious.
(51) The traditional rule, therefore, instructed judges to construe claims in a vacuum.
The Court considers it unreasonable to construe the term "Act of Congress" in the [MFA] as Congress' intent to permit state law to preempt implemented, non-self-executing treaty provisions, but not to preempt self-executing treaty provisions.
Further, the reported opinions cited above arguably would require the Service to construe broadly the phrase, "[i]f the claim for credit or refund relates to an overpayment attributable to any taxes paid or accrued to any foreign country ..." in Sec.
Inside the organization, members interpret and infer the reputation of their organization and react to the external image they construe of their organization.
No matter how extensively trial witnesses might discuss the term 'cam,' it is not the jury's role, but the Court's exclusive obligation, to construe a patent's terms.
Courts routinely strive to fulfill the "reasonable expectations" of the contracting parties and may broadly construe the insurance obligations unless the contract mandates a narrow scope of coverage.
In fact, this directive and a directive to liberally construe the safe haven provisions both derive directly from the Congressional Report for Section 530.
The first three, all previously published, construe the emergence of the modern, professional, discipline-based university as a response to the breakdown of earlier city-based ways of sustaining intellectual activity.
Given the early development of the genre of landscape painting in Holland, as well as the Netherlands' experience in engineering the national landscape, it is perhaps appropriate that many Dutch architects, including Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos of UN Studio and Winy Maas of MVRDV, have found inspiration in the idea of landscape, using it to construe digital models of new cities and regional plans out of data flows, and, on a smaller scale, new topological forms for the interior landscapes of houses.
On February 5, 1998, Bar filed a petition in the surrogate's court to reform and construe the 1993 will as requiring all trust income to be paid to Jo and to split the trust holding the test of the decedent's estate into three parts--a credit shelter trust, a reverse QTIP trust and a residuary trust.
To construe the statutory scheme of the OSP as not running afoul of Article I, Section 3 would require a strained construction of the Florida Constitution that is not countenanced under the law."
The Koran teaches that all goods are ultimately owned by God and that man is their "vice regent," but Islamic scholars rarely construe this as detrimental to private ownership.
Supreme Court voted 5-4 to construe ERISA strictly, rejecting the argument that nonfiduciaries could be liable for compensatory damages for their knowing participation in a fiduciary breach.
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