It's definitely a bad idea to wire a 110V outlet with 220V.  In particular, 220V is usually accomplished in the US using two hot wires, and you don't want to be putting a hot on the neutral or ground connections of a 110V outlet because bad things will happen.  But even if you somehow have a single wire with 220V, if you were to wire that up, the device might short circuit, and thus be a major safety hazard.

(This depends a bit on what country you're in.  I'm guessing North America, since that's the main market with this combination of voltages.)

The [correct outlets](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector) look very different depending on the voltage.  In particular, the most common 220 outlets have horizontal neutral and hot pins.  

<img src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/NEMA_simplified_pins.svg" width="500" />

Maybe you're mistaking a 20A outlet for a 220V outlet?  (It is safe to put a 20A outlet on a 15A circuit, as long as you're okay with trips if you try to use 20A.)

In any case, you may get more useful discussion on the [diy stackexchange](http://diy.stackexchange.com/).