Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • verb Present participle of temporise.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Peel's speech was described as temporising, and the deliverance of his young lieutenant was temporising too, though firm on the necessary principle, as he called it, of which the world was before long to hear so much from him, that the nation should be taxed for the support of a national church.

    The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) 1809-1859 John Morley 1880

  • However, such a shocking thing as violence is hardly hinted at, and the Princess always succeeds, as the Creole lady in _Newton Forster_ said she did with the pirates, in "temporising," while her abductors confine themselves for the most part to the finest "Phébus."

    A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 From the Beginning to 1800 George Saintsbury 1889

  • Thus it is always with those in the high places, ever temporising with their natural desires, ever masking their ordinariness under a show of disinterest.

    CHAPTER XVI 2010

  • Sheer shock is one explanation for this slow and initially temporising response.

    The west should cheer, not fear, this cry for freedom in Egypt | Andrew Rawnsley 2011

  • He concluded: No temporising with Britain on this subject now.

    A Country of Vast Designs Robert W. Merry 2009

  • He concluded: No temporising with Britain on this subject now.

    A Country of Vast Designs Robert W. Merry 2009

  • This needs to become this election campaign's number one issue? not one which either a compromised Labour party or a temporising Conservative party will relish.

    Now we know the truth. The financial meltdown wasn't a mistake ? it was a con 2010

  • In this spirit of temporising policy, he at length composed his mind to rest.

    The Bride of Lammermoor 2008

  • As true friends they are, as he that Caelius Secundus met by the highway side; and hard it is in this temporising age to distinguish such companions, or to find them out.

    Anatomy of Melancholy 2007

  • However deeply sympathetic with such a reasonable characteristic, Soames would have denied it at any ordinary moment — to confess to temporising was not, as it were, done.

    The White Monkey 2004

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