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 (50)

  • The struggle becomes more difficult with each delay, prevarication, and subterfuge. —  Foreign Policy In Focus
  • It was plain, clear writing, without prevarication or spin. —  Tyee - Home
  • The game is German-only so, in spite of enjoying it I wavered on buying the foreign language edition and was rewarded for my prevarication by the announcement of an English edition. —  Boardgame News
  • Labour's spokesman on local government Ciaran Lynch said the decision to scrap e-voting was a welcome end to a "fiasco" marked by "prevarication, financial imprudence and massive waste of taxpayers 'money". —  ireland.com Breaking News
  • He told the following extraordinary story without hesitation or prevarication, and apparently in so open and honest a manner, that no one who heard him doubted the truth of it. —  Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
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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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