palter

Etymology

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

verb

1. To talk insincerely; to prevaricate or equivocate in speech or actions.
   But, with a gesture, she put a period to this dalliance—one shouldn't palter so on an empty stomach, she might almost have said. 1922, Michael Arlen, “2/4/1”, in “Piracy”: A Romantic Chronicle of These Days
   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?’ 2010, Stephen Fry, The Fry Chronicles
2. (now rare) To trifle.
   Don't palter with the second rate. 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room, paperback edition, Vintage Classics, page 100
3. To haggle.
   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". 1611, Cotgrave, A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues, page 738
4. To babble; to chatter.