spin doctor

See also: spindoctor

English

Alternative forms

• spindoctor (rare)

Etymology

From spin + doctor. First used describing US politics, early 1980s.

Noun

spin doctor (plural spin doctors)

1. (business, politics) A person employed to gloss over a poor public image (or present it in a better light) in business and politics, especially after unfavourable results have been achieved. A lobbyist; PR person.

   Many believed that the reduction in public spending was a disaster but the spin doctors presented it as a triumph for lower taxation.

   • 1984 October 21, “The Debate and the Spin Doctors”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN:

     A dozen men in good suits and women in silk dresses will circulate smoothly among the reporters, spouting confident opinions. They won't be just press agents trying to impart a favorable spin to a routine release. They'll be the Spin Doctors, senior advisers to the candidates, and they'll be playing for very high stakes.

   • 2000 December 3, Alexander Stille, “The Original Spin Doctor”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN:

     Now that the cold war has ended and political ideologies have been replaced by pollsters and spin doctors, Machiavelli's cleareyed assessments of power dynamics and pragmatic advantage are suddenly in vogue.

   • 2008 February 19, Richard Norton-Taylor, quoting William Hague, “Iraq weapons dossier draft reveals role of 'spin doctor'”, in The Guardian‎^[3]:

     William Hague, shadow foreign secretary, said the Williams document was "further evidence that spin doctors, not intelligence analysts, were leading from the first in deciding what the British people were told about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction".

   • 2013 October 31, Rowena Mason, quoting David Steel, “Lord Steel criticises culture of spin and tweeting in modern politics”, in The Guardian‎^[4], →ISSN:

     Lord Steel, the former Liberal leader, has launched a despairing attack on the prevalence of spin doctors in politics, noting that he is given "daily outpourings of tweets to circulate" and bombarded by email with "lines to take" on current issues.

Synonyms

• spinmeister
• spinster
• spin merchant

Related terms

• spin machine
• spin control
• spin doctoring

Translations

person hired to improve public image

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: please add this translation if you can

• Danish: spindoktor c, særlig rådgiver c (official government term)
• Dutch: spindoctor (nl) m
• Finnish: imagokonsultti, PR-konsultti; lobbari (fi) (lobbyist)
• French: spin doctor (fr) m, façonneur d’image (fr) m
• German: Imageberater m, Schönredner m (pejorative), Tatsachenbeschöniger m, PR-Berater m, Spindoktor (de) m
• Italian: curatore di immagine m, portavoce (it) m, lobbista m, esperto di comunicazione m
• Polish: spin doktor m, spin doctor m
• Portuguese: marqueteiro m
• Russian: политтехнолог (ru) m (polittexnolog)
• Spanish: asesor de imagen m
• Welsh: doctor areithiau m, sbinddoctor m

Verb

spin doctor (third-person singular simple present spin doctors, present participle spin doctoring, simple past and past participle spin doctored)

1. (idiomatic, transitive) To generate spin (favourable interpretation or bias).

Derived terms

• spin-doctored