Pretence vs Prevarication - What's the difference?
pretence | prevarication |
(label) An act of pretending or pretension; a false claim or pretext.
* 1819 , Oliver Goldsmith, Charles Coote, The History of England, from the Earliest Times to the Death of George the Second , Volume 3,
*:Great armaments were therefore put on foot in Moravia and Bohemia, while the elector of Saxony, under a pretence of military parade, drew together about sixteen thousand men, which were posted in a strong situation at Pima.
*
*:There is an hour or two, after the passengers have embarked, which is disquieting and fussy.Passengers wander restlessly about or hurry, with futile energy, from place to place. Pushing men hustle each other at the windows of the purser's office, under pretence of expecting letters or despatching telegrams.
*1995 , Charlie Lewis, Peter Mitchell, Children?s Early Understanding Of Mind: Origins And Development ,
*:In pilot work we have used the method described in Experiment 2 on children?s memory for the content of their own false beliefs and pretence' and asked them to differentiate between belief and ' pretence .
*2005 , (Plato), Lesley Brown (translator), Sophist , .
*:That part of education that turned up in the latest phase of our argument, the cross-examination of the empty pretence of wisdom, is none other, we must declare, than the true-blooded kind of sophistry.
(label) Intention; design.
*(William Shakespeare) (c.1564–1616)
*:A very pretence and purpose of unkindness.
Deviation from what is right or correct; transgression, perversion.
Evasion of the truth; deceit, evasiveness.
* Cowper
* 2012 , The Economist, Oct 6th 2012,
A secret abuse in the exercise of a public office.
(legal, historical, Ancient Rome) The collusion of an informer with the defendant, for the purpose of making a sham prosecution.
(legal) A false or deceitful seeming to undertake a thing for the purpose of defeating or destroying it.
As nouns the difference between pretence and prevarication
is that pretence is (label) an act of pretending or pretension; a false claim or pretext while prevarication is maladministration.pretence
English
Alternative forms
* pretense (American spelling) * (archaic)Noun
(en noun)p.115,
p.281,
prevarication
English
Noun
(en noun)- Prevarication became the order of the day in his government while truth was a stranger in those halls.
- The august tribunal of the skies, where no prevarication shall avail.
Charlemagne: Mysterious Mariano
- Mr Rajoy frustrates many with his prevarication over a fresh euro-zone bail-out, which now comes with a conditional promise from the European Central Bank (ECB) to help bring down Spain’s stifling borrowing costs.
- (Cowell)