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Mind your language

What is a ‘tergiversation’?

11 January 2020

9:00 AM

11 January 2020

9:00 AM

Last year, someone at US dictionary Merriam-Webster noticed that lots of people were looking up the word tergiversation online. It was because Washington Post columnist George Will had used it in a piece about the US senator Lindsey Graham. ‘During the government shutdown,’ he had written, ‘Graham’s tergiversations — sorry, this is the precise word — have amazed’.

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