Hence the equivocation which confounded Adeliza, but at the same time preserved her from being torn to pieces by the no less mystified Madam Lucifer.

It was evident that the working people were so accustomed to expect equivocation and evasion from those who sought their suffrages, that when they found, instead of that, a direct avowal of what was likely to be disagreeable to them, instead of being affronted, they concluded at once that this was a person whom they could trust.

She would listen to no equivocation and no protest.

Simplicity of diction is integrity of speech; that which admits of least equivocation, that which by the clearest verbal symbols most readily calls up in the reader's mind the images and feelings which the writer wishes to call up.

Her sense of the baseness of his action now was like a lightning illuming every corner of the past: every equivocation, every concealment, every subterfuge he had practised, stood out before her, bare, stripped of every shred of apology or excuse.

Seeing that concealment of that which is true is often a duty, and seeing also that concealment of that which ought to be disclosed is often practically a lie, Jeremy Taylor apparently; jumps to the conclusion that concealment and equivocation and lying are practically the same thing, and that therefore lying is sometimes a duty, while again it is a sin.

This faculty of the mind, when it is exercised immediately about things, is called JUDGEMENT; when about truths delivered in words, is most commonly called ASSENT or DISSENT: which being the most usual way, wherein the mind has occasion to employ this faculty, I shall, under these terms, treat of it, as feast liable in our language to equivocation.

[False or vicious reasoning; show of reason.] N. intuition, instinct, association, hunch, gut feeling; presentiment, premonition; rule of thumb; superstition; astrology^; faith (supposition) 514. sophistry, paralogy^, perversion, casuistry, jesuitry, equivocation, evasion; chicane, chicanery; quiddet^, quiddity; mystification; special pleading; speciousness &c adj.; nonsense &c 497; word sense, tongue sense.

equivocation &c (duplicity) 544; white lie, mental reservation &c (concealment) 528; paltering.

Adv. truly &c (really) 494; in plain words &c 703; in truth, with truth, of a truth, in good truth; as the dial to the sun, as the needle to the pole; honor bright; troth; in good sooth^, in good earnest; unfeignedly, with no nonsense, in sooth^, sooth to say^, bona fide, in foro conscientiae [Lat.]; without equivocation; cartes sur table, from the bottom of one's heart; by my troth &c (affirmation) 535.

He cries out, 'tis impossible for any man to be damned that lives in his religion, and his equivocation is trueas long as a man lives in it, he cannot; but if he die in it, there's the question.

Besides, there seems an equivocation in the use of 'comprehend' and 'conceive' in the same meaning.

There is an inward equivocation which fears to see clearly in itself, wants to make the best of everything, to reconcile old instincts and new beliefs, mutually destructive forces, like the ideas of Country and Humanity, War and Peace....

She tried to check herself, to summon up a glittering equivocation; but his face, his voice, the very words he used, were like so many hammer-strokes demolishing the unrealities that imprisoned her.

It is impossible to see the long scrolls in which every contract is included, with all their appendages of seals and attestation, without wondering at the depravity of those beings, who must be restrained from violation of promise by such formal and publick evidences, and precluded from equivocation and subterfuge by such punctilious minuteness.

I was too broken and overcome by the shock of failure; failure precise and stern, admitting of no equivocation.

One can always put a mystic meaning to the direct saying of a Hindu holy man, but there seemed no equivocation here.

I pull in resolution; and begin To doubt th' equivocation of the fiend, That lies like truth: "Fear not till Birnam wood Do come to Dunsinane," and now a wood Comes toward Dunsinane.

He is not long soft and pathetick without some idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation.

In the way of warlike artifices, few men were more subtle or loved to practise them oftener than Raoul Yvard; but, the mask aside, or when he fell back on his own native dignity of mind, death itself could not have extorted an equivocation from him.

But the words of the old regulation seem expressly, and without equivocation, to require that every member present shall vote.

The delicacy of the allusions leaves their images in a transparent mist; the very elasticity of the equivocation furnishes a refuge for the thought which it disquiets.

I was too broken and overcome by the shock of failure; failure precise and stern, admitting of no equivocation.

" "No equivocation, sir; the forces assist one another at a pinch.

The equivocation had entirely deceived her, and she little thought she had been taking counsel with the rival who was secretly triumphing in Raymond's involuntary constancy, and sowing seeds of vengeance against an ancient enemy.