''prevarication'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''prevarication'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20261015004146-00-⌔

prevarication - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

prevarication (countable and uncountable, plural prevarications)

• Evasion of the truth.
  • ✤ Synonyms: deceit, evasiveness
  • ✤ * Prevarication became the order of the day in his government while truth was a stranger in those halls.*
  • ✤ The trumpet—vvill it ſound? the curtain riſe? And ſhow th’ auguſt tribunal of the ſkies,/VVhere no prevarication ſhall avail,/VVhere eloquence and artifice ſhall fail, […]¹
  • ✤ The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.²
  • ✤ Mr Rajoy frustrates many with his prevarication over a fresh euro-zone bail-out, which now comes with a conditional promise from the European Central Bank (ECB) to help bring down Spain’s stifling borrowing costs.³
• (archaic, now rare) Deviation from what is right or correct.
  • ✤ Synonyms: transgression, perversion
• A secret abuse in the exercise of a public office.
• (Ancient Rome, law, historical) The collusion of an informer with the defendant, for the purpose of making a sham prosecution.
• (law) A false or deceitful seeming to undertake a thing for the purpose of defeating or destroying it.
  • ✤ If it shall appeare, that they haue forfeited their Faith, or wronged their Client by preuarication.⁴

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin praevāricātiō (“collusion with an opponent; duplicity, deceit; violation of duty, transgression”, literally “stepping out of line”), from praevāricor (“to walk crookedly; go astray; transgress”) + -tās. The virtually obsolete sense of deviation or transgression may have been influenced by an earlier stage of borrowing via Middle English prevaricacioun, prevaricacion (“deviation from the law; transgression”) from Anglo-Norman prevaricaciun (“transgression, violation of correct conduct”).

Pronunciation

• (non-merged vowel) enPR: prĭ-văr′ĭ-kā′shən, IPA: /pɹɪˌvæɹ.ɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/
  • Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• (merged vowel) enPR: prĭ-văr′ə-kā′shən, IPA: /pɹɪˌvæɹ.əˈkeɪ.ʃən/
• Rhymes: -eɪʃən

Printed 2026-10-15.

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Footnotes

1. 1782, William Cowper, “Retirement”, in Poems, London: […] J[oseph] Johnson, […], →OCLC, page 291: ↩

2. 1861, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter XIII, in Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, part I, page 239: ↩

3. 2012 October 6, “Charlemagne: Mysterious Mariano”, in The Economist ‎${}^{[1]}$, archived from the original on 25 January 2018: ↩

4. 1628, Robert Le Grys, Argenis, translation of original by John Barclay: ↩

Link to original

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