wooden language

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English

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English Wikipedia has an article on:
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Etymology

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Calque of French langue de bois.

Noun

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wooden language (uncountable)

  1. (derogatory) Speech or writing that is overly abstract, vague, metaphorical or pretentious in order to avoid addressing salient issues.
    • [1990, Roger Scruton, “Ideologically Speaking”, in Christopher Ricks, Leonard Michaels, editors, The State of the Language, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 126:
      Of more consequence is the emergence of a phenomen which is perhaps peculiar to the modern world: the phenomenon which the French and Russians call “wooden language,” and which we might call, in honor of Orwell's satire, newspeak.]
    • 2022 May 20, Patrick McGuinness, “Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov review – the dangers of dwelling in the past”, in The Guardian[1], →ISSN:
      Life behind the iron curtain was an education in a certain kind of humour: dark, unsentimental and absurd. It understood that jokes had become shortcuts to the truth – apart from the bonus of laughter, they turned the wooden language of the regime against itself in ways that sincerity could not.