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  1. tergiversate love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. v. To use evasions or ambiguities; equivocate.
  2. v. To change sides; apostatize.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. To shift; practise evasion; make use of shifts or subterfuges.

Wiktionary

  1. v. intransitive To evade, to equivocate using subterfuge; to deliberately obfuscate.
  2. v. intransitive To change sides or affiliation; to apostatize.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. v. rare To shift; to practice evasion; to use subterfuges; to shuffle.

WordNet 3.0

  1. v. abandon one's beliefs or allegiances
  2. v. be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead or withhold information

Etymologies

  1. From Latin tergiversor ("turn one's back, make excuses"); from tergum ("the back") + versō, frequentive of vertō ("turn"). (Wiktionary)
  2. Latin tergiversārī, tergiversāt- : tergum, the back + versāre, to turn; see wer-2 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

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.”

    NEWS.com.au | Top Stories

  • “Not really do we preserve the unexcelled prices but our turnaround tergiversate payment your Xrumer posting is wonderful fast.”

    Your Right Hand Thief

  • “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.”

    The Social Contract

  • “To tergiversate is to: a. restore a piece of land from a state of despoilment.”

    Blogposts | guardian.co.uk

  • “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. ”

    The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2)

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synonyms (4)

Words with the same meaning

  1. shift
  1. shuffle
  1. prevaricate
  1. desert

hypernyms (5)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. repudiate
  1. disown
  1. renounce
  1. misinform
  1. mislead

reverse dictionary (1)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. tergiverse

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‘tergiversate’ has been looked up 2532 times, loved by 10 people, added to 52 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 16.