tergiversate, v.
(ˈtɜːdʒɪvəseɪt, -ˌvɜːseɪt)
[f. L. tergiversāt-, ppl. stem. of tergiversārī to turn one's back, shuffle, practise evasion, f. terg-um the back + vers-, ppl. stem of vertĕre to turn (cf. versārī to move about).]
1. intr. To practise tergiversation; to desert one's party, turn renegade, apostatize; to shift, shuffle, use subterfuge or evasion; † to refuse to obey, act the recusant. Hence ˈtergiversated ppl. a., renegade, apostate; ˈtergiversating vbl. n., tergiversation, evasion; ppl. a., apostatizing, renegade; † recusant; evasive, shifty.
| 1654 Gayton Pleas. Notes ii. vi. 61 That tergiversating and back-sliding Lady. 1678 Cudworth Intell. Syst. i. iv. §36. 569 Plotinus..as if he were conscious that this assumentum to the Platonick Theology, were not so defensible a thing, doth himself sometime as it were tergiversate and decline it by equivocating in the word Henades. 1831 J. Wilson in Blackw. Mag. XXIX. 725, ‘I am liberal in my politics’, says some twenty-times tergiversated turn⁓coat. 1852 C. M. Yonge Cameos (1877) IV. xviii. 203 Wyatt was examined again and again, and wavered and tergiversated a good deal. 1862 Wraxall Hugo's Misérables v. xvii, Tergiversation is useless, for what side of himself does a man show in tergiversating? |
2. lit. To turn the back (for flight or retreat).
| 1875 Poste Gaius iv. Comm. (ed. 2) 509 If the defendant on being summoned to appear before the magistrate tergiversates or attempts to flee. |