To prevaricate is to avoid telling the truth by being ambiguous, evading, or misleading.
To prevaricate is to avoid the truth by speaking ambiguously, evasively, or misleadingly.
| Front | prevaricate \pri-VAR-i-kayt\ |
|---|---|
| Back | verb To avoid telling the truth by being ambiguous, evading, or misleading. [From Latin praevaricari (to straddle, to collude), from varicare (to straddle), from varus (knock-kneed, bent outwards). To prevaricate is to straddle the boundary between truth and falsehood.] "Our presidents and their advisors, from Kennedy to Nixon and Ford, prevaricated, invented and outright lied for years about the course and casualties of the war." - Clancy Sigal; Caught in a Fantasy Amid Subterfuge; Los Angeles Times; Jun 29, 2001. |
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