(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.
Sham
Definition:
(n.) That which deceives expectation; any trick, fraud, or device that deludes and disappoint; a make-believe; delusion; imposture, humbug.
(n.) A false front, or removable ornamental covering.
(a.) False; counterfeit; pretended; feigned; unreal; as, a sham fight.
(v. t.) To trick; to cheat; to deceive or delude with false pretenses.
(v. t.) To obtrude by fraud or imposition.
(v. t.) To assume the manner and character of; to imitate; to ape; to feign.
(v. i.) To make false pretenses; to deceive; to feign; to impose.
Example Sentences:
(1) The results indicated that smoke, as opposed to sham puffs, significantly reduced reports of cigarette craving, and local anesthesia significantly blocked this immediate reduction in craving produced by smoke inhalation.
(2) Five days later, the animals were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: Group 1 received intracranial implantation of controlled-release polymers containing dexamethasone; Group 2 received intraperitoneal implantation of controlled-release polymers containing dexamethasone; Group 3 received serial intraperitoneal injections of dexamethasone; and Group 4 received sham treatment.
(3) In contrast sham-hemodialysis in group CA and group PS, respectively, did not result in significant increases in amino acid efflux from the leg implying that the protein catabolic effect of blood membrane contact depends on the chemical properties of dialysis membranes.
(4) Meanwhile Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, waiting anxiously for news of the scale of the Labour advance in his first nationwide electoral test, will urge the electorate not to be duped by the promise of a coalition mark 2, predicting sham concessions by the Conservatives .
(5) The plasma renin activity of the 1 day post-stenosis rats showed 65% higher activity than the sham controls with no significant change in the 30-60 days post-stenosis.
(6) The results indicate that, regardless of the photoperiod, no clear functional relationship can be found between the avian pineal gland and thyroid function, although a transitory increase in T4 levels was seen in both pinealectomized and sham-operated birds shortly after the operations.
(7) The amounts of erythropoietin produced in animals subjected to hepatectomy are significantly higher than those observed in sham-operated animals.
(8) However, stimulation of the release of NTLI by intraduodenal administration of oleic acid (0.2 ml) resulted in significantly higher p-NTLI levels in the nephrectomized rats than in the sham operated rats.
(9) Three groups of male rats received lesions of AP and another 3 groups received sham lesion.
(10) Pretreatment with CV6209 had no significant influence on these parameters in sham-operated animals.
(11) We found that kidney extracts from 6 h and 24 h uninephrectomized rats increased [3H]thymidine incorporation into tubular cell DNA, dose-dependently, compared to those from sham-operated rats.
(12) The sizes of adrenaline (A) and noradrenaline (N) cells in the adrenal medulla of nonoperated (NO), sham-operated (SPX), and pinealectomized (PX) male rats (n = 126) were investigated by quantitative light microscopy.
(13) The concentrations and total content of the nicotinamide nucleotides were measured in the livers of rats at various times after partial hepatectomy and laparotomy (sham hepatectomy) and correlated with other events in the regeneration process.
(14) The volume densities of the differing strial components from steroid-administered animals were determined to approximate those of sham-adrenalectomized animals in general.
(15) With five daily 1-hr occlusions of the hepatic artery, rats benefited from significantly reduced tumor growth rates compared with controls that underwent sham operation (P less than 0.05).
(16) In the dynamic phase the weight of interscapular brown adipose tissue was significantly increased in the VMH-lesioned rats, but the specific GDP binding was depressed both in the morning and afternoon when compared with either the sham-operated or PVN-lesioned groups.
(17) There were no changes in the joints which had sham operations.
(18) In contrast, in Px-SUC both masses were comparable to the sham groups.
(19) Only at 3 days did total plasma volume of SAD rats show a modest reduction of about 16% (P less than 0.05 vs. sham-operated plus unoperated controls).
(20) The binding of 125I-labeled epidermal growth factor (EGF) was compared in acini isolated from the regenerating remnant following 90% partial pancreatectomy (ppx) and from the pancreas of sham-pancreatectomized (sham-ppx) rats.