Palter

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /ˈpɔːltÉ™/, /ˈpÉ’ltÉ™/

Alternative forms

• paulter

Origin

Probably from *palter ("rag, trifle, worthless thing"), from Middle Low German palter ("rag, cloth"). More at paltry.

Full definition of palter

Verb

1. To talk insincerely; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions.
• ShakespeareRomans, that have spoke the word,
  And will not palter.
• TennysonWho never sold the truth to serve the hour,
  Nor paltered with eternal God for power.
• 1922, w, “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days Chapter 2/4/1, But, with a gesture, she put a period to this dalliance—one shouldn't palter so on an empty stomach, she might almost have said.
• 2010, Stephen Fry, The Fry ChroniclesI would prevaricate and palter in my usual plausible way, but, this being Cambridge, such stratagems would cut no ice with my remorseless and (in my imagination) gleefully malicious interrogator, who would stare at me with gimlet eyes and say in a harsh voice that crackled with mocking laughter: ‘Excuse me, but do you even know who Lermontov is?’
2. (now rare) To trifle.
• Beaumont and FletcherPalter out your time in the penal statutes.
• 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, Vintage Classics, paperback edition, page 100Don't palter with the second rate.
3. To haggle.
4. To babble; to chatter.

Derived terms

• palterer

Anagrams

• plater