Word.ws English Dictionary

paltered

paltered is the simple past and past participle of palter.

Meaning of palter

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]...
    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...
  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
  4. To babble; to chatter.

Questions about paltered

What is paltered the simple past and past participle of?
Paltered is the simple past and past participle of palter.

Words near paltered in the dictionary

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

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: paltered (page history and authors); palter (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.

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