Word for Today

equivocate ih-KWIV-uh-kayt

verb: To be deliberately ambiguous or unclear in order to mislead or to avoid committing oneself to anything definite.

To equivocate is literally to call equally one thing or the other: It comes from Medieval Latin aequivocare, from the Latin aequus, equal + vocare, to call (from Latin vox, voice). "The witness shuffled, equivocated, pretended to misunderstand the questions." -- Thomas Babington Macaulay