(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.
Quibble
Definition:
(n.) A shift or turn from the point in question; a trifling or evasive distinction; an evasion; a cavil.
(n.) A pun; a low conceit.
(v. i.) To evade the point in question by artifice, play upon words, caviling, or by raising any insignificant or impertinent question or point; to trifle in argument or discourse; to equivocate.
(v. i.) To pun; to practice punning.
Example Sentences:
(1) And please don’t quibble about whether you have any direct lineage to the architects of racism.
(2) Quibbling over whether fashion is more or less important than art is just as pointless as questioning whether or not it is art.
(3) And with four years as her nation’s chief diplomat on the world stage under her belt, Mrs Clinton’s personal gravitas is even harder to quibble with than it might have been in 2008.
(4) Dammers learned that Mandela had just one quibble with the Special AKA song.
(5) Other quibbles: some iPhone apps don't scale so brilliantly to such a large screen.
(6) To quibble further, one might say, is to simply argue about hinges.
(7) I find myself wondering how far I should go to say that FGM is the slicing off on a conscious young girl with no anaesthetic of her clitoris and labia... “This is a quibble about a couple of stitches and it is a complete distraction.” Mr Justice Sweeney, in summing up to the jury on Wednesday, said everyone accepted Dharmasena had saved the life of the woman’s baby in an emergency delivery on 24 November, 2012.
(8) "While I do quibble with the ethics (or lack of ethics) in posting the Salinger stories, they look to be true transcripts of the originals and match my own copies."
(9) You have explained how you have got caught up in this thing, you've explained your motives: I don't want to quibble about any of that.
(10) Even the US administration, which has repeatedly played up the uncertainties in climate science, has not quibbled with the inclusion of statements such as "human activities since 1750 have very likely (>90%) exerted a net warming influence on climate", and "further emissions of greenhouse gases would be expected to change the climate of the 21st century".
(11) No one could quibble with the report’s section on geopolitics.
(12) Certainly, some will quibble as to how much blame the federal government should receive for this economic downturn.
(13) But there's a bigger problem with the politics of idleness than quibbling over definitions.
(14) The next question is also on inflation but is a bit quibbly: what if inflation is like, you know, really big?
(15) Oh, there are quibbles, so many quibbles, some unfortunately presentational.
(16) Homewatt.co.uk sells LED bulbs and if you don't think they are suitable, use its seven-day no-quibble returns policy to get your money back.
(17) And for the hopefuls lining up outside the passport office: thou shalt not quibble about freedom of speech.
(18) But the deeper flaw was a complacent assumption that Labour was the moral choice, and that people would realise as much if only their misguided quibbles about public spending could be neutralised.
(19) Some quibbled about the methodology, but, taken at face value, the test yielded good and bad results.
(20) It's an understandable stance, since to quibble over the reasons why 15 million died in the first world war may well look unseemly, particularly for a politician hoping that his party replaces Gove's as government next year, but it doesn't have much of the lion about it.