palter

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English

Alternative forms

Etymology

Probably from Middle English *palter (“rag, trifle, worthless thing”), from Middle Low German palter (“rag, cloth”). More at paltry.

Pronunciation

Verb

palter (third-person singular simple present palters, present participle paltering, simple past and past participle paltered)

  1. To talk insincerely; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions.
    • 1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, :
      Romans, that have spoke the word,
      And will not palter.
    • 1852, Alfred Tennyson, Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, London: Edward Moxon, , →OCLC:
      Who never sold the truth to serve the hour,
      Nor paltered with eternal God for power.
    • 1922, Michael Arlen, “2/4/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days‎:
      But, with a gesture, she put a period to this dalliance—one shouldn't palter so on an empty stomach, she might almost have said.
    • 2010, Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles:
      I would prevaricate and palter in my usual plausible way, but, this being Cambridge, such stratagems would cut no ice with my remorseless and (in my imagination) gleefully malicious interrogator, who would stare at me with gimlet eyes and say in a harsh voice that crackled with mocking laughter: ‘Excuse me, but do you even know who Lermontov is?’
  2. (now rare) To trifle.
    • 1625, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, “The Elder Brother. A Comedy.”, in Comedies and Tragedies , London: Humphrey Robinson, , and for Humphrey Moseley , published 1679, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
      Palter out your time in the penal statutes.
    • 1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 36, in The History of Pendennis. , volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, , published 1849–1850, →OCLC:
      Behold this man, stored with genius, wit, learning, and a hundred good natural gifts: see how he has wrecked them, by paltering with his honesty, and forgetting to respect himself.
    • 1886, Henry James, The Princess Casamassima, London: Macmillan and Co.:
      He waited and waited, in the faith that Schinkel was dealing with them in his slow, categorical Teutonic way, and only objurgated the cabinetmaker for having in the first place paltered with his sacred trust. Why hadn't he come straight to him—whatever the mysterious document was—instead of talking it over with French featherheads?
    • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, paperback edition, Vintage Classics, page 100:
      Don't palter with the second rate.
    • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 86:
      So enfeebled was resolution in him that he could only palter at a fatuous picture of himself carrying Podson bodily over the lagoon and dumping him on the sand dunes.
  3. To haggle.
    • 1611, Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, page 738:
      Herceler. Voyez to haggle, to dodge. N.b. Cotgrave defines herceler/harceler by example: "to haggle, hucke, hedge, or paulter long in the buying of commodity".
    • c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies  (First Folio), London: Isaac Iaggard, and Ed Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, (please specify the act number in uppercase Roman numerals, and the scene number in lowercase Roman numerals):
      And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
      That palter with us in a double sense;
      That keep the word of promise to our ear,
      And break it to our hope.
  4. To babble; to chatter.

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