evasion

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. The act or an instance of evading.
2. n. A means of evading; a subterfuge.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. The act of evading or eluding; a getting away or out of the way; avoidance by artifice or strategy; artful escape or flight.
2. n. A means of avoidance or escape; an evasive or elusive contrivance; a subterfuge; a shift.
3. n. In fencing, the avoiding of a thrust by moving the body without changing the position of the feet. Rolando (ed. Forsyth). Synonyms Evasion, Equivocation, Prevarication, Shift, Subterfuge, quibble, all express artful or dishonorable modes of escaping from being frustrated or found out. The first three imply the use of language; shift and subterfuge may be by words or actions. Evasion in speech may be simply avoiding, as by turning the conversation or meeting one question with another. Equivocation is using words in double and deceptive senses. Prevarication may be in action, but is properly understood to be in words; it includes all tricks of language that fall short of downright falsehood; it is, literally, a stepping on both sides of the truth; the word is a strong one. All these words convey opprobrium in proportion to the amount of insincerity implied. Shift and subterfuge may be modes of evasion; shift, a thing turned to as a mean expedient, a trick; subterfuge, a place of hiding, hence an artifice. Shift does not necessarily express a dishonorable course, and evasion and subterfuge are often lightly used. See artifice, and expedient, n.

Wiktionary

1. n. The act of eluding or avoiding, particularly the pressure of an argument, accusation, charge, or interrogation; artful means of eluding.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The act of eluding or avoiding, particularly the pressure of an argument, accusation, charge, or interrogation; artful means of eluding.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. the deliberate act of failing to pay money
2. n. the act of physically escaping from something (an opponent or a pursuer or an unpleasant situation) by some adroit maneuver
3. n. a statement that is not literally false but that cleverly avoids an unpleasant truth
4. n. nonperformance of something distasteful (as by deceit or trickery) that you are supposed to do