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ent, or to justify opinions or conduct; a shift; an evasion. Affect not little shifts and subterfuges, to avoid the force of an argument. I. Watts. By a miserable subterfuge, they hope to render this position safe by rendering it nugatory. Burke.

hing to mislead the eye or the understanding, or to conceal some covert deed or design; a subterfuge.

The use of artful subterfuge, designed to draw away attention from the merits of a case or question; -- specifically applied to legal proceedings; trickery; chicanery; caviling; sophistry. Prior. To shuffle from them by chicane. Burke. To cut short this, I propound it fairly to your own canscience. Berkeley.…

A subterfuge; an excuse.

An artifice; trick; tricky device; subterfuge. For all yuor brags, hooks, and crooks. Cranmer.

To get away from by artifice; to avoid by dexterity, subterfuge, address, or ingenuity; to elude; to escape from cleverly; as, to evade a blow, a pursuer, a punishment; to evade the force of an argument. The heathen had a method, more truly their own, of evading the Christian miracles. Trench.

That which disguises; a pretext or subterfuge.

A sudden turn; a starting from the point or line; hence, an artful evasion or subterfuge; a shift; a quibble; as, the quirks of a pettifogger. "Some quirk or . . . evasion." Spenser. We ground the justification of our nonconformity on dark subtilties and intricate quirks. Barrow.

To shift; to practice evasion; to use subterfuges; to shuffle. [R.] Bailey.

The act of tergiversating; a shifting; shift; subterfuge; evasion. Writing is to be preferred before verbal conferences, as being freer from passions and tergiversations. Abp. Bramhall.

A turning; a trick; a subterfuge. [Obs.] To work, or solve, a traverse (Naut.), to reduce a series of courses or distances to an equivalent single one; to calculate the resultant of a traverse. -- Traverse board (Naut.), a small board hung in the steerage, having the points of the compass marked on it, and for each po…

Evasion; subterfuge. [Obs.] Bacon.