---
title: "Prevaricate"
description: "To prevaricate is to walk crookedly around the truth."
author: "Rahim Rasul"
type: "Defined term"
section: "Logos"
noted: "2024-12-10"
url: "https://iloveprocess.com/logos/prevaricate/"
site: "I Love Process"
---

# Prevaricate

_Latin prae, before + vāricō, to straddle_

## Definition

**Prevaricate** refers to speaking or acting in an intentionally evasive or ambiguous way, deliberately avoiding the truth or a direct answer. It describes vague, indirect, or misleading communication: dodging a question, equivocating, or hedging so as never to commit to a clear position.

## First-Principles Definition

**To prevaricate is to walk crookedly around the truth.** The prevaricator neither tells the truth plainly nor refuses to speak. They step toward the question and then sideways, keeping a foot on each side so they can never be pinned to either. The word still carries its first picture: a path that will not run straight.

At its core, it asks:

- **What was the question?** Name the plain thing that needed a plain answer.
- **Where did the answer turn?** Find the point where the reply stepped sideways instead of forward.
- **What does the turn protect?** Ask what the speaker keeps safe by never landing on one side.

## Etymology

- *prae*: before, in front
- *vāricō*: to straddle, to spread the legs apart

The word **prevaricate** comes from the Latin *prae* meaning "before" or "in front" and *vāricō* meaning "to straddle," from *vāricus*, "with feet spread apart," and *vārus*, "bent." Joined in the verb *praevāricor*, they meant "to walk crookedly," to step out of line. In Roman law the word named an advocate who played a double part, secretly colluding with the other side in a sham trial. English borrowed it from *praevāricātus*, a form of that verb. It once also meant "to deviate" or "to transgress," a sense now obsolete; today it means to speak or act evasively.