prevaricate
General verb
To speak or act evasively in order to avoid telling the truth.
Stop prevaricating and tell me plainly whether you took the file or not.
Medicine verb
To avoid giving a direct answer, typically to conceal something.
When asked about missed medication doses, the patient began to prevaricate.
Law verb
To speak or act evasively to avoid committing oneself to the truth.
Counsel accused the director of prevaricating whenever the dates were put to him.
Business verb
To speak or act evasively in order to avoid telling the truth or committing.
He prevaricated over liability for weeks, hoping we would drop the indemnity clause.
Rarity runs from 0 (a word everyone knows) to 100 (almost never seen outside specialist or literary writing). Level is the word's real difficulty on the CEFR scale, from A1 to C2.
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