different between palter vs palmer

English

Alternative forms

• paulter

Etymology

Probably from Middle English *palter (“rag, trifle, worthless thing”), from Middle Low German palter (“rag, cloth”). More at paltry.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?p??lt?/, /?p?lt?/

Verb

palter (third-person singular simple present palters, present participle paltering, simple past and past participle paltered)

1. To talk insincerely; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions.
   • 1855, Alfred Tennyson, Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington

     Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, / Nor paltered with eternal God for power.

   • 2010, Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles

     I would prevaricate and palter in my usual plausible way, but, this being Cambridge, such stratagems would cut no ice with my remorseless and (in my imagination) gleefully malicious interrogator, who would stare at me with gimlet eyes and say in a harsh voice that crackled with mocking laughter: ‘Excuse me, but do you even know who Lermontov is?’

2. (now rare) To trifle.

   • Palter out your time in the penal statutes.

   • 1886, Henry James, The Princess Casamassima

     He waited and waited, in the faith that Schinkel was dealing with them in his slow, categorical Teutonic way, and only objurgated the cabinetmaker for having in the first place paltered with his sacred trust. Why hadn't he come straight to him—whatever the mysterious document was—instead of talking it over with French featherheads?

   • 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, Vintage Classics, paperback edition, page 100

     Don't palter with the second rate.

3. To haggle.
   • 1611, Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, p. 738.

     Herceler. Voyez to haggle, to dodge. N.b. Cotgrave defines herceler/harceler by example: "to haggle, hucke, hedge, or paulter long in the buying of commodity".

   • c. 1606, William Shakespeare, Macbeth. (uses palter in two senses: to haggle and to prevaricate)

     And be these juggling fiends no more believed, That palter with us in a double sense; That keep the word of promise to our ear, And break it to our hope.

4. To babble; to chatter.

Derived terms

• palterer

Translations

Anagrams

• Alpert, Plater, plater, replat

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?p??m?/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?p?m?/
• Rhymes: -??m?(?)

Etymology 1

From Middle English palmer, from Anglo-Norman palmer, from Old French paumier (“palmer”), from Medieval Latin palm?rius (“palmer”), from palma (“palm tree”).

Noun

palmer (plural palmers)

1. (now historical) A pilgrim who had been to the Holy Land and who brought back a palm branch in signification; a wandering religious votary.
   • 1674, Thomas Staveley, The Romish horseleech : or, an impartial account of the intolerable charge of Popery to this nation, p. 93:

     The Pilgrim had some home or dwelling place, the Palmer had none. The Pilgrim travelled to some certain, designed place or places, but the Palmer to all. The Pilgrim went as his own charge, but the Palmer professed wilful poverty and went upon alms.
2. (archaic) Abbreviation of palmerworm.

Translations

Etymology 2

From noun

Noun

palmer (plural palmers)

1. A ferule used to punish schoolboys by striking their palms.

Etymology 3

From the transitive verb to palm.

Noun

palmer (plural palmers)

1. One who palms or cheats, as at cards or dice.

References

• palmer (pilgrim) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• palmer in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.

Anagrams

• LaPerm, Marple, ampler, lamper, relamp, repalm

Catalan

Alternative forms

• palmera

Etymology

palma +? -er

Noun

palmer m (plural palmers)

1. palm tree

Latin

Verb

palmer

1. first-person singular present passive subjunctive of palm?

Middle English

Alternative forms

• palmere

Etymology

Named for the palm branches they were wont to bring back from the Levant to signify their pilgrimage. From Anglo-Norman palmer, from Old French paumier, from Medieval Latin palm?rius (“palmer”), from palma (“palm tree”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?pal.m?r(?)/

Noun

palmer (plural palmeres)

1. A pilgrim who has been to the Holy Land.
   • ca. 1370–90, William Langland, Piers Plowman,

     Pilgrims and palmers plighted them together

     To seek for Saint James and the saintes in Rome ...

   • Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, General Prologue, ll. 13–15:

2. (by extension) Any pilgrim or crusader.

Descendants

• English: palmer

Norwegian Bokmål

Noun

palmer m

1. indefinite plural of palme

Swedish

Noun

palmer

1. indefinite plural of palm