Crossword clues for palter
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Palter \Pal"ter\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. Paltered; p. pr. & vb. n. Paltering.] [See Paltry.]
To haggle. [Obs.]
--Cotgrave.-
To act in insincere or deceitful manner; to play false; to equivocate; to shift; to dodge; to trifle.
Romans, that have spoke the word, And will not palter.
--Shak.Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor paltered with eternal God for power.
--Tennyson. To babble; to chatter. [Obs.]
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.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1530s, "speak indistinctly," of unknown origin. It has the form of a frequentative, but no verb palt is known. Connection with paltry is uncertain. Hence "play fast and loose" (c.1600). Related: Paltered; paltering; palterer.
Wiktionary
vb. 1 To talk insincerely; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions. 2 (context now rare English) To trifle. 3 To haggle. 4 To babble; to chatter.
WordNet
v. be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead or withhold information [syn: beat around the bush, equivocate, tergiversate, prevaricate]
Usage examples of "palter".
They were aware, too, of a strange capriciousness in their senses, and of a tendency of each to palter with the things perceived.
His pride of race, his obedience to the law which separated his nation from the world, his personal integrity were things which no conceivable bribe could have induced him to palter with for a moment.
But, still, he had to justify himself either upon his own account or for the benefit of that posterity to conciliate which so many public men have paltered with the truth.
He paltered, shifting on his feet, his brow contracted in perplexity, as if I had propounded some intricate trifle of the higher mathematics.
It actually paltered with those convictions and with the truth itself.
They had paltered with her, as they sometimes did, given her an answer so strange that she could hardly understand it.
So he walked to and fro on the heath outside the town, paltering with himself, struggling with himself, eating out his heart with eagerness, trying to believe that he was waiting for the night.
De Jars, for instance, would have allowed himself to be cut up into little pieces rather than have broken the promise he had given Quennebert a week ago, because it was given in exchange for his life, and the slightest paltering with his word under those circumstances would have been dastardly.
The hope for the future of South Africa is that they or their descendants may learn that that banner which has come to wave above Pretoria means no racial intolerance, no greed for gold, no paltering with injustice or corruption, but that it means one law for all and one freedom for all, as it does in every other continent in the whole broad earth.
The typical picayune paltering of a desk clerk, and I thought that would be an end to it.
Dimmesdale's destroyed him, because he paltered weakly with his conscience.