Word.ws English Dictionary

palter

/ˈpɒltə//ˈpɔl.tɚ/

palter verb: to talk insincerely; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions.

Verb

palter (third-person singular simple present palters, present participle paltering, simple past and past participle paltered)

  1. To talk insincerely; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions.
    • Romans, that have spoke the word,
      And will not palter.1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • Who never sold the truth to serve the hour,
      Nor paltered with eternal God for power.1852, Alfred Tennyson, Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC
    1. To give a false impression by selective use of true but misleading statements.
  2. (archaic) To trifle.
    • Palter out your time in the penal statutes.1625, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, “The Elder Brother. A Comedy.”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1679, →OCLC, (please...
    • Behold this man, stored with genius, wit, learning, and a hundred good natural gifts: see how he has wrecked them, by paltering with his honesty, and forgetting to respect himself.1848 November – 1850 December, William Makepeace Thackeray, chapter 36, in The History of Pendennis. […], volume (please specify |volume=I or II), London: Bradbury and Evans, […], published...
  3. To haggle.
    • Herceler. Voyez to haggle, to dodge. N.b. Cotgrave defines herceler/harceler by example: "to haggle, hucke, hedge, or paulter long in the buying of commodity".1611, Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, page 738
    • And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
      That palter with us in a double sense;
      That keep the word of promise to our ear,
      And break it to our hope.c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount...
  4. To babble; to chatter.

palter meaning in Tamil and Urdu

palter in Tamil

தடுமாறு

palter in Urdu

ہیر پھیر کرنا, کترانا

Examples of palter in a sentence

  • 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.1922, Michael Arlen, “2/4/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days:
  • So enfeebled was resolution in him that he could only palter at a fatuous picture of himself carrying Podson bodily over the lagoon and dumping him on the sand dunes.1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 86:

Forms of palter

third-person singular presentpalters
present participlepaltering
past participlepaltered
pastpaltered
alternative formpaulter

Origin of palter

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

Words formed from palter

Words that rhyme with palter

Questions about palter

What does palter mean?
Palter means to talk insincerely; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions.
What is palter in Tamil?
Palter in Tamil is தடுமாறு. See Palter meaning in Tamil.
How do you use palter in a sentence?
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.
What part of speech is palter?
Palter is a verb.
How do you pronounce palter?
Palter is pronounced /ˈpɒltə/ (UK).
What is the past tense of palter?
The past tense of palter is paltered.

Words near palter in the dictionary

  1. palsywort
  2. palsyworts
  3. Palta
  4. Paltamo
  5. paltensimycin
  6. palter
  7. paltered
  8. palterer
  9. palterers
  10. palterey
  11. paltering

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: palter (page history and authors); palter (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); palter (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-palter.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-AcpoKrane-palter.wav.

Cite this entry: “palter.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/palter. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.