It's "procrastinate"!

Look chaps!  It's probably "procrastinate" you mean to write, not "prevaricate".  It's normally my colleagues who use the work incorrectly, but today I read its incorrect use in the Telegraph, p16 ("Vatican hardliners push for beatification of Pope Pius").  Nick Squires (or Dina Kraft) wrote, "Vatican hardliners said Pope Benedict XVI was prevaricating on starting the formal process of sainthood ...".  Now you just know that that was wrong.

You normally mean that someone is delaying doing something, that they really should get down to work and make something happen.  You don't mean that they are speaking or acting in an evasive way, perhaps even lying ... do you?

So please use the right word, "procrastinate"; if you don't, we will lose the very useful meaning of "prevaricate".

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