tergiversation

Word of the Day for Tuesday January 13, 2004

tergiversation \tuhr-jiv-uhr-SAY-shuhn\, noun:
1. The act of practicing evasion or of being deliberately
ambiguous.
2. The act of abandoning a party or cause.

No doubt if I worked on it, I could evolve some kind of
double-talk that would get around the offensive phrase, and
make the, to me, face-saving implication; but to hell with
that, I have too much respect for the English language, and
for your understanding of it, to go in for tergiversation
and weasely circumlocution.
--Richard Gillman, "Standing Up to Ezra Pound," [1]New York
Times, August 25, 1991

Like most writers, I have always championed thrift....
Not long ago, however, I experienced an extraordinary
tergiversation. Now I'm an ally of excess, a proponent of
redundancy.
--Michael Norman, "When an Author's Words Are Sold by the
Pound," [2]New York Times, September 15, 1991
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Tergiversation comes from Latin tergiversatus, past participle
of tergiversari, "to turn one's back, to shift," from tergum,
"back" + versare, frequentative of vertere, "to turn." The
verb form is tergiversate.

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