PREVARICATION • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Prevarication

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/prəvˌɛrəkˈeɪʃən/ Listen

noun

Prevarication 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. "The august tribunal of the skies, where no prevarication shall avail."

A secret abuse in the exercise of a public office.

(Law)

(a)

(Roman Law) The collusion of an informer with the defendant, for the purpose of making a sham prosecution.

(b)

(Common Law) A false or deceitful seeming to undertake a thing for the purpose of defeating or destroying it.

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Etymology of 'Prevarication'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Prevarication" Quotes from Famous Books

... that cleaved its way to Tunis Latham's very soul. His tale did not remove from her heart all its burden. She was still penitent for the falsehood she had told in direct words to Cap'n Ira and Prudence about her first meeting with Tunis. But that prevarication, at least, had been for ...

— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... or unconscious, seems ubiquitous throughout the range of physical phenomena of spiritism, and false pretence, prevarication and fishing for clues are ubiquitous in the mental manifestations of mediums. If it be not everywhere fraud simulating reality, one is tempted to say, then the reality (if any reality there be) has the bad luck of being fated everywhere to simulate fraud. The suggestion of humbug seldom stops, ...

— Memories and Studies • William James

... bullies and blackguards, or who would speedily have become so if left to their own devices, and there were cowards, and boys who carelessly told an untruth, or were addicted to the too common vice of prevarication. There were also vicious boys, or who would have been vicious had they not been watched and restrained. These were exceptions to the general rule. The Doctor's system, embracing the law of kindness, answered well, and ...

— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... when they were shut in alone, "I'll have a straightforward statement, without any prevarication, or I give you over at once into custody. If you can't clear yourself, and I don't see how you possibly can, there's the jail before you, the only ...

— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson

... seen such times—England and America have glanced that way. Women, like men, often do not know that the big prizes gravitate where they belong; instead, they set traps for them, lie in wait and consider prevarication and duplicity better than truth. When women use their beauty, their wit and their pink persons in politics, trouble lies low around the corner. But this sister of Seneca was never seen in public unless it was at her husband's side; she ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

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