give somebody the runaroundinformalAVOID to deliberately avoid giving someone a definiteanswer, especially when they are asking you to do something 敷衍某人,对某人顾左右而言他〔尤当被某人要求做事时〕
Every time we ask the landlord about fixing the roof, he gives us the runaround.
每次我们要求房主修理屋顶,他就敷衍我们。
Examples from the Corpus
give somebody the runaround• I called the insurance company about this claim, but they kept giving me the runaround.