What's the difference between calumny and prevaricate?

Calumny


Definition:

  • (n.) False accusation of a crime or offense, maliciously made or reported, to the injury of another; malicious misrepresentation; slander; detraction.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Claims that boys were murdered by VIP sex ring are credible and true - police Read more “I denied all and each of the allegations in turn [to police] and in detail and categorised them as false and untrue and, in whole, a heinous calumny,” said Proctor’s statement.
  • (2) It’s the sickness of those who insatiably try to multiply their powers and to do so are capable of calumny, defamation and discrediting others, even in newspapers and magazines, naturally to show themselves as being more capable than others.
  • (3) Left-wing philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy spoke of a noble man who had been the victim of a "spiral of horror and calumny".
  • (4) The combination of blinking and nodding when he says "rekindled freedom's flame" tempts us to truly un-Christian calumny.
  • (5) They must take their children away from school; they cannot pay their rent; they starve with their families; they are politically and socially defamed and calumniated.
  • (6) He told the BBC: "A dreadful slander is being perpetrated … If your father of beloved memory was treated like that you would do anything at all to rebuff and rebut and destroy these calumnies.
  • (7) Perhaps he would have been intrigued by the announcement of the latest hi-tech wheeze intended to counter the age-old problem of the rapid dissemination of falsehood, calumny and plausible gibberish: a social media lie detector .
  • (8) For the Sun, Juncker is "the most dangerous man in Europe", the son of a "Nazi" – an improbable calumny.
  • (9) Perhaps the greatest calumny committed against old people – and the one that most frightens the not-yet-old – is the belief that ageing causes us to leech vitality.
  • (10) Photograph: Ashmolean Museum Nor is this the only calumny Ruskin has suffered.
  • (11) The similarities in the suffering of these two children should remind us of the calumny and chaos that has defined the history of childhood adversity in Britain.
  • (12) Their masterly addition that Mitchell called them "plebs" too was the killer calumny.
  • (13) But many Jews do worry that his past instinct, when faced with potential allies whom he deemed sound on Palestine, was to overlook whatever nastiness they might have uttered about Jews, even when that extended to Holocaust denial or the blood libel – the medieval calumny that Jews baked bread using the blood of gentile children.
  • (14) Uribe has long denied any links to paramilitaries and on Wednesday accused Cepeda via Twitter of "desperately seeking more calumnies" against him.
  • (15) The calumny that they are simply repeating the ideas of the 1990s – or that they are Tories in disguise – is no more true for its steady repetition.
  • (16) Unable to shake off the calumny that they broke the world's banks, Labour must handcuff itself to credibility and responsibility.

Prevaricate


Definition:

  • (v. i.) To shift or turn from one side to the other, from the direct course, or from truth; to speak with equivocation; to shuffle; to quibble; as, he prevaricates in his statement.
  • (v. i.) To collude, as where an informer colludes with the defendant, and makes a sham prosecution.
  • (v. i.) To undertake a thing falsely and deceitfully, with the purpose of defeating or destroying it.
  • (v. t.) To evade by a quibble; to transgress; to pervert.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The move follows months of prevarication by the prime minister with carefully worded denials.
  • (2) Second, share prices have been increasing all year in response to prevarication by the US central bank, which has struggled to raise interest rates despite signalling a willingness to do so.
  • (3) Years of failed talks and prevarication by industrialised countries have shaken his belief in the UN process.
  • (4) And yet he was back on the show as a panellist a few weeks later, and seemed no happier, telling one prevaricating contestant: "I'm tired of looking at you."
  • (5) But President Asif Ali Zardari's government, faced with a wave of public outrage, has prevaricated on the issue, and says it cannot decide on the immunity question until 14 March.
  • (6) But the international community has prevaricated to the point of inertia.
  • (7) The timeframe, though on the face of it more rapid than other redress offers by banks, should be seen against the background of more than a decade of prevarication and denial by the bank.
  • (8) Incrementally, forwards and backwards, prevaricating, bickering: so it has been for three years of European troubles that began on the periphery, in Greece, but have spread to the heartland, condemning Europe to a lost decade.
  • (9) Because denial of reality and prevarication are hallmarks of alcoholism, we make two recommendations.
  • (10) The move follows months of seeming prevarication by the prime minister with carefully worded denials.
  • (11) We urgently need the same high levels of protection in our home waters.” Kerry McCarthy, Labour’s shadow environment secretary, said: “It is now six years since the last Labour government’s Marine and Coastal Access Act and during that time the government has delayed and prevaricated on delivering a much-needed ecologically coherent network of marine protected areas.
  • (12) And at a time when we are dealing with a global climate change threat, when international borders have ebbed, when extremism doesn’t recognise nations and when we need to work together more than ever, is it really radical to quit Nato, to prevaricate over membership of the EU or trash our reputation as an internationalist party.
  • (13) She will own up to a fighting spirit, even if she prevaricates over the details.
  • (14) Lady Valentine of the business lobby group London First told the BBC she was "frustrated by 50 years of prevarication" over the issue.
  • (15) Confronted with mass discontent, the once-progressive major parties, as Thomas Frank laments in his latest book Pity the Billionaire , triangulate and accommodate, hesitate and prevaricate, muzzled by what he calls "terminal niceness".
  • (16) But the meeting is overshadowed by deadlock in Athens and prevarication in Madrid.
  • (17) And I’ve never had a problem with taking decisions, or been much of a man for prevarication.” And not much of a man for regrets about the campaign he fought, though it’s no secret there were tensions between SNP strategists and the umbrella Yes campaign.
  • (18) It has given rise to a mentality in which there is so much elision of the past and subtle prevarication about race that the bogus breast-beating about the necessity of accommodating historical complexity by leaving the statue in place frankly sounds insulting to many.
  • (19) No more floundering and prevaricating, this is the time for MPs to lay down the law with strong red line amendments to the bill triggering article 50.
  • (20) But President Asif Ali Zardari's government, faced with a wave of public outrage, has prevaricated on the issue, and says it cannot decide on immunity issue until 14 March.