What's the difference between deceit and prevarication?

Deceit


Definition:

  • (n.) An attempt or disposition to deceive or lead into error; any declaration, artifice, or practice, which misleads another, or causes him to believe what is false; a contrivance to entrap; deception; a wily device; fraud.
  • (n.) Any trick, collusion, contrivance, false representation, or underhand practice, used to defraud another. When injury is thereby effected, an action of deceit, as it called, lies for compensation.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is of course important that migrants are not scapegoated; but such pious deceit from comfortable middle-class commentators can only provoke the unemployed, the low-paid and the homeless.
  • (2) Gillon rejects each of these arguments, contending that avoiding deceit is a basic moral norm that can be defended from utilitarian as well as deontological points of view.
  • (3) They received more than 25,000 applications, prompting fury from fans, and Greater Manchester police said yesterday they were exploring whether any action could be taken against people who had deceitfully applied for tickets .
  • (4) In return for the biggest bailout in global financial history – rescue funds from the EU and IMF amounting to €240bn (£188bn) – it was hoped that old mentalities would change and a nation humbled by near-bankruptcy would finally dump its culture of deceit.
  • (5) Their evolution often is deceitful and severe problems of differential diagnosis with others pathological infantile states arise.
  • (6) It would only apply to adults over 18 who were working without coercion, deceit or violence.
  • (7) The renewable energy company Ecotricity is giving £250,000 to the Labour party, and has accused the government of being deceitful on climate and energy policy.
  • (8) The charges announced today describe a securities fraud trifecta of lies, deceit, and greed.
  • (9) The City Fathers, who drive through an abandoned city to their glass towers, who were not impacted but enjoyed the tax dollars and developments of downtown; and Freddie Gray’s community, full of holes and deceit and poverty.
  • (10) Eric Schneiderman has accused Barclays of “a systematic pattern of fraud and deceit” by operating its dark pool to favour high-frequency traders.
  • (11) Fidel called President Obama's conference remarks ' deceitful, demagogic and ambiguous ,'" a cable said.
  • (12) His passing is sweet and it is really interesting how deceitful he can be: Rodríguez can look absent from the game but can pounce and catch his markers unaware.
  • (13) In a campaign founded on deceit and incompetence, this might be the least galling thing Trump and company have done.
  • (14) If you think that such deceits are the normal stuff of politics, consider the story's sequel.
  • (15) Sterling accused Johnson, a basketball legend turned investor and one of the US's most beloved African Americans, of deceitfulness and promiscuity.
  • (16) But I’m worried because the other side is cunning, deceitful and back-stabbing.
  • (17) Hancock and Bianca Rinehart allege their mother acted "deceitfully" and with "gross dishonesty" in her dealings with the trust, set up in 1988 by her father, Lang Hancock, with her children as the beneficiaries.
  • (18) From the 10-year-old boy assaulted when he met Jimmy Savile outside a hotel to ask for an autograph, to the many children abused in their schools after writing to Jim'll Fix It, the victims of one of the country's most prolific, manipulative and deceitful paedophiles, had one thing in common; their absolute vulnerability.
  • (19) Reprising the theme that guided him and George Bush through the deceit and carnage of the "war on terror", the former prime minister took his crusade against "Islamism" on to a new plane.
  • (20) Woody Allen has struck back against allegations he molested Dylan Farrow in a blistering reply that accuses Mia Farrow of spite, deceit and hatefulness.

Prevarication


Definition:

  • (n.) The act of prevaricating, shuffling, or quibbling, to evade the truth or the disclosure of truth; a deviation from the truth and fair dealing.
  • (n.) A secret abuse in the exercise of a public office.
  • (n.) The collusion of an informer with the defendant, for the purpose of making a sham prosecution.
  • (n.) A false or deceitful seeming to undertake a thing for the purpose of defeating or destroying it.

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.