Equivocation

(n.) The use of expressions susceptible of a double signification, with a purpose to mislead.

Thesaurus Entries

ambiguity, ambivalence, amphibology, antinomy, apparent soundness, avoidance, avoiding reaction, bickering, boggling, captiousness, casuistry, caviling, chicane, chicanery, circularity, circumvention, coloring, confabulation, counterword, defense mechanism, disingenuousness, distortion, dodge, dodging, double, double entendre, duck, elusion, elusiveness, equivocal, equivocality, equivocalness, equivoque, escape, evasion, evasive action, evasive reasoning, evasiveness, exaggeration, fallaciousness, fallacy, false coloring, false swearing, falsification, falsifying, fencing, fluctuation, forbearance, forestalling, forestallment, getting around, hairsplitting, hedging, insincerity, irony, jesuitism, jesuitry, jink, logic-chopping, lying, misapplication, miscoloring, misconstruction, misrepresentation, misstatement, mystification, neutrality, nit-picking, nonintervention, noninvolvement, obfuscation, obscurantism, oscillation, oversubtlety, oxymoron, paltering, paradox, parrying, pendulation, perjury, perversion, pettifoggery, philosophism, plausibility, plausibleness, polysemant, portmanteau word, prevarication, prevention, pun, pussyfooting, quibbling, rationalization, refraining, self-contradiction, shifting, shilly-shally, shilly-shallying, shuffle, shuffling, shunning, shunting off, shy, sidestep, sidestepping, sidetracking, slip, sophism, sophistical reasoning, sophistication, sophistry, special pleading, speciosity, specious reasoning, speciousness, squinting construction, straining, subterfuge, subtlety, suppressio veri, tergiversation, the runaround, trichoschistism, vacillation, vicious circle, vicious reasoning, wavering, weasel word, weasel words, wobbling, zigzag