A nice definition of "Weasel words" from the TELEGRAPH revised 21.04

 Weasels* ( =comadrejas )have a bad name in England- for example , they are the " bad guys " in Toad of Toad hall /the wind in the willows.

Glittery texts by bigoo.ws

Jounalists often use "weasel"   as a negative imprecise adjective to imply cowardly words, people avoiding responsability , etc, from the expression "to weasel out of something" ( the mustelidea family ARE very good at getting in and out of very tight spaces ,with their long thin strong flexible fast bodies they are a bit like fast-moving mammalian snakes!

For example 

The boss weaseled out of his 



responsability for the accident by pinning the blame on an overworked and underpaid underling  who had signed an ok.

But there is a 500 year old precise meaning: ......

From the telegraph

April 11th, 2010 16:01

Vote for me or face social unrest, says Nick Clegg

Posted in: Politics

Journalists sometimes use the phrase “weasel words” without being entirely clear about what they’re trying to say.
A weasel word is a word which, when placed next to another word, drains that word of meaning, as weasels were supposed to drain the contents of an egg while leaving the shell uncracked.

The origin of this supposition is, like most important things, Shakespearean. “I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs,” says Jacques in As You Like It. But it was the great F A Hayek who popularised the notion of the weasel word. And he had a particular word in mind. “Social is a weasel word that has acquired the power to empty the nouns it qualifies of their meanings,” he wrote in The Fatal Conceit. Think about it: social market, social justice, social security, social studies, social progress, social history, social responsibility… Read More if you are interested in British politics at election time

40 Comments

By Daniel Hannan




Here is wikipedia, and then answers com :
Quote:

Mike says :the following may come in very useful to you students , weasel words though they be....
# "Alleged(ly)..."
# "Some people say..."
# "Contrary to many..."
# "Research has shown..."
 Passives, especially:
 # "It has been reported that.../ .....is are were etc reported to....."  eg John is reported to have committed adultery/it has been reported that John committed adultery# "...is claimed to be.../# "It is claimed..." "
# "...is thought to be..."
# "It is believed that..."
# "It is rumoured that..."and similarly hoped, expected understood , etc
# "It is generally considered that..."


# "Some feel that..."
# "Critics/experts say that..."
# "noted" or "observed" when applied to opinions
# Anthropomorphisms such as "Science says ..." or "Medicine believes

Weasel words are phrases that are evasive, ambiguous, or misleading. On Wikipedia, the term refers to evasive, ambiguous or misleading attribution. Weasel words can present an apparent force of authority seemingly supporting statements without allowing the reader to decide whether the source of the opinion is reliable, or they can call into question a statement. (this is a moral objection to their use in wikipedia BY JOURNALISTS AND ENCYCLOPEDIA-WRITERS , but your productions of English only have to be in good common English) If a statement cannot stand without weasel words, it does not express a neutral point of view; either a source for the statement should be found, or the statement should be removed. If, on the other hand, a statement can stand without such words, their inclusion may undermine its neutrality, and the statement will generally be better off without them.

For example, "Luton, UK is the nicest town in the world", is an example of a biased or uninformative statement. The application of a weasel word or expression can give the illusion of neutrality: "Some people say Luton, UK, is the nicest town in the world." Unquote

elsewhere on internet,answers com:


# "'Why, weasel words are words that suck all the life out of the words next to them, just as a weasel sucks an egg and leaves the shell. If you heft* (*= pick up, carry, lift, connotation a heavy object requiring strength))the egg afterward it's as light as a feather, and not very filling when you're hungry, but a basketful of them would make quite a show, and would bamboozle* (*= to fool, to con , to deceive, usually by showy or extravagent or very intelligent-sounding distraction) the unwary.( wary =cautious)  ' . . .

"This is the origin of the term Colonel [Theodore] Roosevelt has made famous."
(Herbert M. Lloyd, letter to The New York Times, June 3, 1916)


# "As an old Time writer, I immediately spotted, in two consecutive sentences, the weasel-word 'reportedly,' the Time-honored hedge * (* to hedge your bets,= to bet on more than one horse to win, to have a "fall-back (retreating) position if you lose your advance position -> a hedge, literally a fence or boundary made of continuous thick bushes in a line, metaphorically = this planB, retreat position, place where you have hidden your reserves. Companies etc have "hedge funds"  for emergencies and contingencies) against the possibility that the facts in a given sentence might not hold up to reasonable scrutiny."
(John Gregory Dunne, "Your Time Is My Time." The New York Review of Books, April 23, 1992)


*Note: I didn't know, but appently some English-speakers ( perhaps they're ignorant city-folk, I'm a country boy, or perhaps it's a very old use, I must find out)  use the word 
"Weasel" 
to cover ANY member of the "Mustelidae" family, which are all brave ferocious attacking carniverous hunters, capable of killing animals many times bigger than themselves, long, thin, strong, with lots of sharp   little teeth :
Weasels themselves
Ferrets
Polecats ( the semidomesticated - working animals, not pets- type ) 
Stoats
Ermine. the ones whose white winter fur is a luxury, used for the official robes for the English aristocracy in the House of Lords.
and Civets, whose very strong smell is used in perfumes.