(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.
Subterfuge
Definition:
(n.) That to which one resorts for escape or concealment; an artifice employed to escape censure or the force of an argument, or to justify opinions or conduct; a shift; an evasion.
Example Sentences:
(1) Such a coalition could break through the inertia and subterfuge now deadlocking the negotiations.
(2) "It is LSE's view that the students were not given enough information to enable informed consent, yet were given enough to put them in serious danger if the subterfuge had been uncovered prior to their departure from North Korea," the university said in an email sent to all staff and students on Saturday.
(3) In my own new novel I hope to contribute in some small way to the subterfuges of what may be England's most secretive literary county.
(4) In Paris, Cahun had played a major part in Georges Bataille 's Contre-Attaque resistance group, and in Jersey she soon instigated an outrageous – not to mention dangerous – game of subterfuge, producing fake letters and tracts advertising unrest among the occupying forces.
(5) Supporters of Cable were also looking to see if they have a case to take the Daily Telegraph to the police or Press Complaints Commission for using false names, addresses and subterfuge to inveigle Liberal Democrat ministers into expressing doubts about some coalition policies.
(6) At a dinner I attended in Krakow, a Polish woman in her 30s said she believed the Smolensk crash to be a tragic accident caused by human error, not divine intervention – a lack of judgment not Russian subterfuge.
(7) But such subterfuges do little to hide a crude reality that Eritreans who have fled are desperate to describe.
(8) The magazine editor also defended the use of subterfuge by media organisations.
(9) Under the terms of the Ipso code the Sunday Mirror has 28 days to respond to the complaint and is expected to argue that the subterfuge used is justified by the public interest in exposing Newmark.
(10) Factitious hypoglycemia, on the other hand, results from deliberate subterfuge by the patient and may thus elude proper diagnosis for some time.
(11) Allardyce is a man who, as the recordings obtained by subterfuge show , can be lured by promises of cash into making unguarded jibes about his peers and colleagues.
(12) In sometimes choosing not to answer simple questions, Cookson has been criticised as a career politician when he strives to be a genuine cycling man who shares the overwhelming distaste for corruption and subterfuge.
(13) The talks – which ended in disarray after the US, working with a small group of 25 countries, tried to ram through an agreement that other developing countries mostly rejected – were marked by subterfuge, passion and chaos.
(14) Proud to be a "provincial" writer, in his novel Kept (2006) Taylor begins with a bravura passage describing his home county: "A land of winding backroads and creaking carts and windmills, a land of flood, and eels and elvers and all that comes from water, a land of silence and subterfuge, of things not said but only whispered, where much is kept secret which would be better laid open to scrutiny."
(15) In Kim, people die rather casually; engage in deceit and subterfuge, and tell each other fabulous stories.
(16) Simon Ringrose, specialist prosecutor in the CPS’s Special Crime Division, said: “Mr Mahmood portrayed himself as the master of subterfuge and as the ‘King of the Sting’, but on this occasion it is he and Mr Smith who have been exposed.
(17) Beyond this, there was the oddity that the subterfuge-laden missive originally emerged in the Uxbridge constituency office of Mr Mitchell's deputy, John Randall, which made it doubly destabilising.
(18) The Labour party was furious with the Tories because it believes their opponents, whose general election campaign is being run by the controversial Australian Lynton Crosby, stepped over an unofficial mark to embark on subterfuge and entrapment.
(19) The 36-year-old, who held the position of managing director at Leeds until April, has not been charged with a criminal offence and denies all the allegations against him, saying he may have been lured to Dubai through “subterfuge”.
(20) But the party felt that using material obtained by subterfuge from "students" was unacceptable.