Weasel Words the Art of Saying Nothing at All
"And you really believe all that? I tin't tell when yous decorate your sentences with all those hedges."
Weasel Words are nigh words or phrases that imply more than than they actually hateful. Taken at face up value, they don't say much at all, or are just not impressive. Nevertheless, the way they're used imply there's substance to them, that they mean something.
This is one reason they're a common feature of advertising, both on telly and elsewhere: companies tin imply that products or offers are better than they actually are without getting into legal trouble for lying well-nigh it. For example, "part of this consummate breakfast" doesn't mean the production itself completes the breakfast, but the implication is that information technology does.
For an extensive and detailed examination of Weasel Words, meet this entry at Wikipedia.
Or, improve yet, run into this entry! Some people say that weasel words are a necessary generalisation. Tv set Tropes editor Sockatume believes that if you know who'due south saying something, you should mention it.
Do you see what nosotros did in that location?
The passive vocalism is oftentimes used as weasel wording. The passive vocalization is often used in journalism when something is stated to be done but it is not desired that the question "By whom was it done?" should be answered.
For one form of weasel words we don't want around here, see Examples Are Not Arguable. As an interesting note the term is called that non to imply weasels are inherently evil somehow, merely rather in reference to how they eat eggs past sucking the insides out and only make a small hole, significant an egg they accept sucked may appear to exist intact until someone looks at information technology more closely, in the same way weasel words suck the meaning out of a statement without being immediately obvious.
Compare Tropes Hidden from Audience, many of which these tropes are.
- Adjacent to This Complete Breakfast: Like the description says, this is trying to imply that the product is what completes the breakfast, simply in authenticity, it's only side by side to information technology.
- All-Natural Snake Oil: Using the word 'natural' or like to describe a product in advertisement. This is weasel wording because sometimes Nature Is Not Prissy, and sometimes only office of the production is natural.
- Asbestos-Complimentary Cereal: Implying that a food production is proficient for you because it lacks something that'south obviously bad, while saying naught about what it does contain, which may exist more important information.
- Absolute Comparative: Advertising a product past using a comparison that sounds positive merely doesn't really mean anything (for instance, a pillow being described every bit "thirty% softer" than most pillows is an case of this because softness isn't really something you lot can measure).
- Crunchtastic: Describing a production with made-up words that sound positive considering they cease in the endings of positive words, such as "(l)icious", "(r)ific", or "tastic", but because these words are made-upwardly, they don't mean anything.
- Damned by Faint Praise: Praising something you lot don't really like by pointing out something that may exist true just is and then mundane/weak/beside the point that pointing it out isn't actually a compliment.
- Merely Pennies a Day: Making something expensive seem cheap past splitting the full cost into "X dollars/pounds/whatsoever per [relatively short menses of fourth dimension]".
- Lite Crème: Misspelling a give-and-take when the ingredient information technology suggests isn't there or is inappreciably there. Information technology's weasel wording because, for example, "creme" implies there is cream, when at that place really isn't.
- Never Needs Sharpening: Making the production seem positive by saying that information technology "doesn't demand X", when in reality, it breaks when you do 10 with it.
- New and Improved: A production is changed slightly and so advertisers hype upwardly the fact that it'south "new". The implication is that new = proficient, but it's non necessarily the case.
- Parity Product Paradox: Everyone's claiming their product is "the all-time", merely that means that "best" is at present "normal", and so they need permission to merits information technology's better.
- People's Republic of Tyranny: Naming an oppressive democracy something that points out the fact that information technology's democratic to try and make it sound non-oppressive.
- Quote Mine: Taking a quote from something to prove a point, but the context gives the quote a dissimilar significant.
- Up to __ or More: Using the phrase "up to 10 or more" to advertise something, which is meaningless because "up to X or more" could be anything.
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Source: https://bestwatt.serveftp.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeaselWords
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