The Zigzag Path to Prevarication

Hello,

This week I’m looking askance at prevaricators in dictionaries. Don’t worry, the lexicographers aren’t lying to us but the history of prevarication is a crooked tale.

Pirate Captain Grace often prevaricated about her share of the booty

Prevarication arrived in English in the late 1300s, although presumably we had liars long before that date. It was originally spelled prevaricacioun and it described any divergence from the right course, any breaking of a law or commandment which, in the scale of things, appears worse than a little fib.

Prevarication was borrowed by English from Old French prevaricacion (breaking God’s laws) and before that from Latin praevaricationem (duplicity, not following duty or good behaviour). It’s Latin roots are fascinating. It comes from praevaricari (to make a false accusation or literally to walk crookedly) and in Church Latin it was used as a verb meaning to transgress.

The Latin word is compounded from prae (before) which is a prefix used in words like, for example, prefix. This is joined to varicare (to straddle) which is connected to varus (bowlegged) which gives the word its crooked sense. This brings a whole new level to the use of crooked or crook to describe somebody as being untrustworthy.

Prevarication, while it may have started in transgressions against church rules, by the 1600s was describing any form of evasion, quibbling, or dishonesty, just as it does today.

“Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable” adds a little more to the story of prevarication. He repeats that the Latin roots relate to straddling and going crooked or zigzag but explains that Pliny (Roman author, naturalist, and naval commander whose descriptions of mythical beasts are a little embellished to say the least) claimed the Latin term was originally applied to farmers who ploughed a crooked ridge in their fields. Then later prevarication was used to describe the actions of men who gave crooked answers in the law courts or lied and deviated from the straight line of the truth.

It’s amazing to me that 2,000 years later we still ask people to be straight with us, accuse them of prevarication, or simply of being crooked, all thanks to Roman farmers.

Until next time, happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)