Palter

Romans, that have spoke the word, And will not palter.

Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor paltered with eternal God for power.

"The hat," he said, "might have been managed, and the trousers could have been lent, but the coat, Mr Bunion, was beyond our means." Which piece of information being delivered in a very grave voice, and a confidential manner, the curate had, perforce, to accept; but inwardly he had a profound suspicion that the tall man was paltering with the truth.

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.

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?’

Palter out your time in the penal statutes.

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.

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?

Don't palter with the second rate.

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.