weasel word

English

Noun

Template:examples-right weasel word (plural weasel words)

1. (derogatory) A word used to qualify a statement so as to make it potentially misleading.

   Synonym: hedge

   Hypernym: qualifier

   • 1900. Century Magazine, quoted in Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins by Robert Hendrickson (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1987)).

     Weasel words are words that suck all of the life out of the words next to them just as a weasel sucks an egg and leaves the shell.

   • May 31 1916, Theodore Roosevelt, speech delivered in St. Louis, MO:

     Now, you can have universal training or you can have voluntary training, but when you use the word 'voluntary' to qualify the word 'universal', you are using a weasel word; it has sucked all the meaning out of 'universal'. The two words flatly contradict one another.

Translations

A word used to qualify a statement so as to make it potentially misleading

• Dutch: vaagtaal f, wezelwoord n
• German: schwammiger Begriff m
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Hungarian: homályos, ködösítő szó/kifejezés/megfogalmazás
• Turkish: mana bozucu kelime

Verb

weasel-word (third-person singular simple present weasel words, present participle weasel wording, simple past and past participle weasel worded)

1. To use weasel words.
   • 1979, Peter Straub, Ghost Story:

     Now Sears looked down at the person fate had put closer to him than anyone else in the world, and knew that Ricky was thinking that he had weasel-worded his way out of the last question.

See also

• Category:English hedges

Further reading

• weasel word on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• “weasel word”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.