You don’t know the word “palter”?  I didn’t either, until I read a recent paper by Frederick Schauer and Richard J. Zeckhauser of Harvard.  The paper’s abstract defines this incredibly useful term, palter:

Abstract:     
A lie involves three elements: deceptive intent, an inaccurate message, and a harmful effect. When only one or two of these elements is present we do not call the activity lying, even when the practice is no less morally questionable or socially detrimental. This essay explores this area of “less-than-lying,” in particular intentionally deceptive practices such as fudging, twisting, shading, bending, stretching, slanting, exaggerating, distorting, whitewashing, and selective reporting. Such deceptive practices are occasionally called “paltering,” which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as acting insincerely or misleadingly.

The authors suggest that paltering “has received little systematic study.” They also suggest that when harmful paltering is established, “the sanctions against it should be at least as stiff as those against lying.”

At this page you can find the link to the entire article.   I’m definitely going to incorporate “palter” into my vocabulary. 

“Paltering” is going to be an extremely useful word, unfortunately.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 at 12:37 am and is filed under Good and Evil, Language, Web Site. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.