palter
/ˈpɔːltə
/ /ˈpɒltə/verb [no object] archaic
1Equivocate or prevaricate in action or speech: if you palter or double in your answers, I will have thee hung alive in an iron chain...
- He is the patron saint of fibbing (also known as paltering).
- Too much paltering in journalism is fatal to a writer's development.
- What a paltering - what a childish paltering - unworthy of a schoolboy - is his solemn denial that the Pilgrims sailed for New England because they were persecuted.
2 (palter with) Trifle with: this great work should not be paltered with...
- He sought - and found - a man who paltered with the truth and monkeyed with the work of officials.
- It is the worse, then, when he palters with the terms of banishment, allowing Bolingbroke to return in six years, Mowbray never.
- So to hold is near to saying that we have been paltering with justice.
Derivatives
palterer
- ‘Was I a preacher?’ Pain asked of Anderson, ‘no I was a palterer, and my living was but in paltry, and I had no mind to mend yet.’
- Britain's decline in military and economic power forced Churchill to move "from conjurer to palterer," from someone who could transform the Dunkirk retreat into a victory, to someone who could only pretend to play the role of leader of a great power.
Origin
Mid 16th century (in the sense 'mumble or babble'): of unknown origin.