Evasive

3 definitions found

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

  evasive \e*va"sive\ ([-e]*v[=a]"s[i^]v), a. [Cf. F. ['e]vasif.
     See {Evade}.]
     Tending to evade, or marked by evasion; elusive; shuffling;
     avoiding by artifice.
     [1913 Webster]
  


           Thus he, though conscious of the ethereal guest,
           Answered evasive of the sly request.     --Pope.
     [1913 Webster]
  
           Stammered out a few evasive phrases.     --Macaulay.
     -- {E*va"sive*ly}, adv. -- {E*va"sive*ness}, n.
     [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  evasive
       adj 1: deliberately vague or ambiguous; "his answers were brief,
              constrained and evasive"; "an evasive statement"
       2: avoiding or escaping from difficulty or danger especially
          enemy fire; "pilots are taught to take evasive action"
       3: skillful at eluding capture; "a cabal of conspirators, each
          more elusive than the archterrorist"- David Kline [syn: {elusive}]

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

  90 Moby Thesaurus words for "evasive":
     ambiguous, amoral, bickering, cagey, captious, casuistic, caviling,
     choplogic, close, closemouthed, conscienceless, corrupt, corrupted,
     criminal, crooked, cunning, dark, deceitful, devious, discreet,
     dishonest, dishonorable, dissembling, doubtful, dubious, elusive,
     elusory, equivocal, equivocating, equivocatory, felonious, fishy,
     fraudulent, hairsplitting, hedging, ill-got, ill-gotten, immoral,
     indirect, insidious, intangible, logic-chopping, malingering,
     misleading, nit-picking, not kosher, oblique, paltering, petty,
     picayune, prevaricating, pussyfooting, questionable, quibbling,
     rotten, secret, secretive, shady, shameless, shifty, shirking,
     shuffling, sinister, sliding, slippery, sly, sophistical,
     suspicious, tergiversant, tergiversating, trichoschistic, tricky,
     trifling, trivial, unclear, uncommunicative, unconscienced,
     unconscientious, unconscionable, underhand, underhanded, unethical,
     unprincipled, unsavory, unscrupulous, unstraightforward, vague,
     weasel-worded, without remorse, without shame