weasel word

plural weasel words

1. datedderogatoryA word that negates or removes the meaning of the word it qualifies.

   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.

   1 more example

   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.

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

2. derogatoryA word used to hedge a statement, for example to make it vague, equivocal, or misleading.

   In scrapping HS2's eastern leg and descoping Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), Prime Minister Boris Johnson's frequent and unambiguous promises to build both have been exposed for the weasel words they were.

   2021 December 1, Nigel Harris, “IRP snuffs out 'levelling up'”, in RAIL, number 945, page 3

   Synonyms: hedge

present singular third person weasel words · participle present weasel wording · participle past weasel worded · past weasel worded

1. To use weasel words.

   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.

   1979, Peter Straub, Ghost Story