tergiversate

Other forms of tergiversate

past tense

tergiversated·

present participle

tergiversating·

third person

tergiversates·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about tergiversate

What does tergiversate mean?

tergiversate means "be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead or withhold information". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in tergiversate?

tergiversate has 4 syllables: ter-gi-ver-sate. The stress falls on "gi".

What is another word for tergiversate?

Close synonyms include beat around the bush, equivocate, prevaricate, palter, apostatize. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is tergiversate a common word?

tergiversate is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.