Definitions

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun someone who temporizes; someone who tries to gain time or who waits for a favorable time

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Is this space of our couple of hours too dimensional for you, temporiser?

    Finnegans Wake 2006

  • ‘Que la trahison se taise! car c’est trahir que de conseiller de temporiser avec Buonaparte.

    The Life of Charlotte Bronte 2002

  • "Nothing was omitted that might make for the temporiser"; even the example of Paul, who went up into the Temple to pay his vow by the advice of the Apostle James, which step, however, Knox pronounced at once, notwithstanding his absolute reverence for Holy Writ, to have been wrong, and not of God -- a mistake of both the Apostles, and manifestly bringing no blessing with it.

    Royal Edinburgh Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets George Reid 1862

  • Mais la Providence permit qu'un homme se trouvat qui n'a jamais su ce que c'est que la crainte; qui aima sa patrie mieux que sa renommee; impenetrable devant les menaces, inaccessible aux louanges, il se presenta devant le conseil de la nation, et levant son front tranquille en haut, il osa dire: 'Que la trahison se taise! car c'est trahir que de conseiller de temporiser avec Buonaparte.

    Life of Charlotte Brontë — Volume 1 Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell 1837

  • He is prudent by nature, and a temporiser from necessity.

    History of the Girondists, Volume I Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution Alphonse de Lamartine 1829

  • This threat had no effect on Kutusoff; he persisted in remaining inactive; either because to the frost of age was superadded that of winter, and that in his shattered frame his mind was depressed by the sight of so many ruins; or that, from another effect of old age, a person becomes prudent when he has scarcely any thing to risk, and a temporiser when he has no more time to lose.

    History of the Expedition to Russia Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 Philippe-Paul S��gur 1826

  • "Le pape différa tant qu'il put la réparation, persuadé qu 'avec les Français il n'y a qu' à temporiser, et que tout s'oublie."

    Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica James Boswell 1767

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