prevarication

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“
I have found it true, and I arrest you Surely, nothing in that letter can be so misconstrued as to implicate me Mr. Wayne, this prevarication is as useless as it is unseemly.

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Definitions (10)

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  1. The act of prevaricating or deviating, especially from truth, honesty, or plain-dealing; evasion of truth or duty; quibbling or shuffling in words or conduct. Th' august tribunal of the skies, Where no prevarication shall avail, Where eloquence and artifice shall fail. Cowper, Retirement, l. 657. The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is … uneasy under … are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie. George Eliot, Silas Marner, xiii.
  2. Transgression; violation: as, the prevarication of a law. In our prevarications, and easy betrayings, and surrendering of ourselves to the enemy of his [God's] kingdom, Satan, we are his enemies. Donne, Sermons, vii. The prevarications of the natural law have also their portion of a special punishment, besides the scourge of an unquiet spirit. Jer. Taylor, Works (ed. 1835), I. 10, Pref. But on holi-dayes men every where runne to the alehouse, to playes, to enterludes, and dances, to the very derision of God's name, and the prevarication of the day. Prynne, Histrio-Mastix, I., vi. 12.
  3. A secret abuse in the exercise of a public office or commission.
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Examples

  • Falsehood and prevarication are alien to my nature. —  William of Germany
  • They were told at least a week in advance when one was going to occur so they could put off any well-known citizens, such as judges or more rarely politicians. —  Dangerous Lady
  • I have found it true, and I arrest you Surely, nothing in that letter can be so misconstrued as to implicate me Mr. Wayne, this prevarication is as useless as it is unseemly. —  Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession
  • But the speaker for the defence will bring forward on his side the usage of common conversation; and he will seek the meaning of the word from its contrary; from a genuine accuser, to whom a prevarication is the exact opposite; or from consequents, because the tablets are given to the judge by the accuser; and from the name itself, which signifies a man who in contrary causes appears to be placed, as it were, in various positions. —  The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
  • "I then told him that he had no authority to charge me with prevarication, and that if he believed that I had not fastened down the tent wall, the only thing he could do was to report me. —  Henry Ossian Flipper The Colored Cadet at West Point
 

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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

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Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (1)

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  1. = French prévarication = Spanish prevaricacion = Portuguese prevaricação = Italian prevaricazione, from Latin prævaricatio(n-), a stepping out of the line (of duty or propriety), violation of duty, prevarication, from prævaricari, past participle prævaricatus, walk crookedly, prevaricate: see prevaricate.
 

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