weasel word
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.19 in modern English
17
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
2
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A word used to hedge a statement, for example to make it vague, equivocal, or misleading.
Derogatory
verb
To use weasel words.
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."
- "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."