Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To use evasions or ambiguities; equivocate.
- v. To change sides; apostatize.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To shift; practise evasion; make use of shifts or subterfuges.
Wiktionary
- v. To evade, to equivocate using subterfuge; to deliberately obfuscate.
- v. To change sides or affiliation; to apostatize.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To shift; to practice evasion; to use subterfuges; to shuffle.
WordNet 3.0
- v. abandon one's beliefs or allegiances
- v. be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead or withhold information
Etymologies
- Latin tergiversārī, tergiversāt- : tergum, the back + versāre, to turn; see wer-2 in Indo-European roots.
Examples
“At Dictionary.com they went for "tergiversate" - perhaps to force people to use dictionary.com to look up what the hell the word even means.”
“Not really do we preserve the unexcelled prices but our turnaround tergiversate payment your Xrumer posting is wonderful fast.”
“But unfortunately the expulsion of James II, which he called his "abdication," compelled him to use all reserve, to shuffle and to tergiversate, in order to avoid making William out a usurper.”
“To tergiversate is to: a. restore a piece of land from a state of despoilment.”
“The testimony which stirred up the bile of the holy fathers could not but be given, unless you had been willing basely to tergiversate and to expose yourself to their taunts. ”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘tergiversate’.
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Words build meanings from origins( etymology )
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 837 more...
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SAT list (now featuring sat, sateen, and satori)
sat, sateen, satori, SAT, Sat, Saturday, satay, compensate, satellite, Satchmo, Erik Satie, Saturn and 66 more...
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Verbages
puddle, kowtow, tessellate, defalcate, embezzle, enkindle, ablate, frivol, moonlight, tongue-tie, gobble, pettifog and 22 more...
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SAT words
tergiversate, cymotrichous, vigilance, wince, consternation, cower, neutralize, euphony, cacophony, misanthrope, bibliophile, kleptomania and 81 more...
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Not quite love
prolix, pleonastic, senescence, autochthonous, loup, pronk, onomatopoeia, magisterial, rixatrix, esurient, blowsabella, crapulence and 57 more...
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