Meaning: Ambiguous or quibbling speech.
Origin: Stewart Chaplin's story Stained glass political platform, 1900, contains this line: "Why, weasel words are words that suck the life out of the words next to them, just as a weasel sucks the egg and leaves the shell."
The Daily Oklahoman, October 1906 used the term in questioning the sincerity of a set of principles which was being written by the Democratic Party: "If written after the nominations, will it express in plain words the economic demand of the exploited class, or will it be filled in with weasel words, well sounding to the people, but well meaning to corporate greed?"
If Theodore Roosevelt, then Colonel Roosevelt, is to be believed then it was the latter. In 1910, he was reported in various US newspapers as saying that he liked the Republican state platform because it contained no "weasel words", explaining that "weasel words" were words which sucked the meaning out of the words in front of them.
Weasel words is an informal term for words that are ambiguous and not supported by facts. They are typically used to create an illusion of clear, direct communication.
Weasel words are usually expressed with deliberate imprecision with the intention to mislead the listeners or readers into believing statements for which sources are not readily available. Tactics that are used include:
It is important that real examples do not in fact explain, at a later stage of the argument, what exactly is meant by "it turns out that"; the whole needs to be looked at before it can be decided that it is a weasel term.
Extrapolating through the use of grammatical devices such as qualifiers and the subjunctive can be used to introduce facts which are beyond the proof of the cited work. This is a legitimate function of language, which resembles weaseling. When it is impractical to enumerate and cite many individual works, then the use of these grammatical devices conforms to the standards established by tradition. For example: "For scientists as for so many others, evolution served as an example of a fundamental challenge to long-held convictions".
Also rhetorically valid is the use of the neuter pronoun it and the adverb there as impersonal dummy subjects, as when an author intends to distance himself/herself from the work, or to separate one part of the text from another:
The personal pronoun one, as a subject or an object in formal speech, that refers either to oneself or as a generalization to anyone in a similar situation, may also be used justifiably to distance a speaker from a subject.
The passive voice can be used in English to weasel away from blame. A passive construction occurs when the object of an action is made into the subject of a sentence, or the object (usually indicated by "by the") is missing altogether, as the sentence "mistakes were made by the politicians", for example, has been curtailed deliberately to "mistakes were made".
In the example: "Mistakes were made," it is clear that the names of the persons who made mistakes is being withheld and the intention of weaseling is obvious.
In the "over 120 different contaminants..." sentence, a more precise number of "contaminants" might have avoided the impression of weaseling, even though we might never know who the "dumpers" were.
A related issue is the stylistic qualms held by linguists and teachers who discourage the passive voice being used too frequently.[5][6]
However, in the sentence
the usage of the passive voice is not necessarily connected with weaseling. The phrase, "100 votes are required to pass the bill", is probably a statement of fact, that it is exactly 100 votes which are needed for the passing of the bill, and it might be impossible to predict where these votes are to come from. For a statement to be a weasel expression, it needs other indications of disingenuousness than the mere fact that it is expressed in the passive voice.
Students have asked to place on this web site ideas about words to avoid using in memos, letters, and reports. These weasel words (where all the meaning is sucked out of them) include:
Sometimes superfluous adjectives creep into our writing. For example, the phrase, loud shouting, needs some attention. If we shout, it is probably loud. Therefore, when in doubt, leave it out.