v. [f. L. tergiversāt-, ppl. stem of tergiversārī to turn one’s back, shuffle, practise evasion, f. terg-um the back + vers-, ppl. stem of vertĕre to turn (cf. versārī to move about).]
1. intr. To practise tergiversation; to desert one’s party, turn renegade, apostatize; to shift, shuffle, use subterfuge or evasion; † to refuse to obey, act the recusant. Hence Tergiversated ppl. a., renegade, apostate; Tergiversating vbl. sb., tergiversation, evasion; ppl. a., apostatizing, renegade; † recusant; evasive, shifty.
1654. Gayton, Pleas. Notes, II. vi. 61. That tergiversating and back-sliding Lady.
1678. Cudworth, Intell. Syst., I. iv. § 36. 569. Plotinus … as if he were conscious that this assumentum to the Platonick Theology, were not so defensible a thing, doth himself sometime as it were tergiversate and decline it by equivocating in the word Henades.
1831. J. Wilson, in Blackw. Mag., XXIX. 725. ‘I am liberal in my politics,’ says some twenty-times tergiversated turncoat.
1852. Miss Yonge, Cameos (1877), IV. xviii. 203. Wyatt was examined again and again, and wavered and tergiversated a good deal.
1862. Wraxall, Hugo’s Misérables, V. xvii. Tergiversation is useless, for what side of himself does a man show in tergiversating?
2. lit. To turn the back (for flight or retreat).
1875. Poste, Gaius, IV. Comm. (ed. 2), 509. If the defendant on being summoned to appear before the magistrate tergiversates or attempts to flee.
