palter
Definition from Wiktionary, the free dictionary
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[edit] English
[edit] Alternative forms
[edit] Etymology
Probably from *palter (“rag, trifle, worthless thing”), from Middle Low German palter (“rag, cloth”). More at paltry.
[edit] Pronunciation
[edit] Verb
palter (third-person singular simple present palters, present participle paltering, simple past and past participle paltered)
- To talk insincerely; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions.
- 2010, Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles:
- I would prevaricate and palter in my usual plausible way, but, this being Cambridge, such stratagems would cut no ice with my remorseless and (in my imagination) gleefully malicious interrogator, who would stare at me with gimlet eyes and say in a harsh voice that crackled with mocking laughter: ‘Excuse me, but do you even know who Lermontov is?’
- 2010, Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles:
- (now rare) To trifle.
- Palter out your time in the penal statutes. — Beaumont and Flanders.
- 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, Vintage Classics, paperback edition, page 100
- Don't palter with the second rate.
