Palter

4 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Palter \Pal"ter\, v. t.
     To trifle with; to waste; to squander in paltry ways or on
     worthless things. [Obs.] "Palter out your time in the penal
     statutes." --Beau. & Fl.
     [1913 Webster]



From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Palter \Pal"ter\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. {Paltered}; p. pr. & vb.
     n. {Paltering}.] [See {Paltry}.]
     1. To haggle. [Obs.] --Cotgrave.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. To act in insincere or deceitful manner; to play false; to
        equivocate; to shift; to dodge; to trifle.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Romans, that have spoke the word,
              And will not palter.                  --Shak.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Who never sold the truth to serve the hour,
              Nor paltered with eternal God for power. --Tennyson.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     3. To babble; to chatter. [Obs.]
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  palter
       v : be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead or
           withhold information [syn: {beat around the bush}, {equivocate},
            {tergiversate}, {prevaricate}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  43 Moby Thesaurus words for "palter":
     around the bush, back and fill, bargain, beat about,
     beg the question, bicker, boggle, cavil, chaffer, choplogic,
     dicker, dodge, duck, equivocate, evade, evade the issue, falsify,
     fence, fib, hedge, hem and haw, higgle, huckster, hum and haw, lie,
     mince the truth, mince words, mystify, nitpick, obscure, parry,
     pick nits, prevaricate, pussyfoot, quibble, shift, shuffle, shy,
     sidestep, split hairs, tergiversate, waffle, weasel