As a follow-up to my piece on skunked terms, it might be worthwhile to consider another type of communication that goes by an animal name: weasel words. The term first appeared in print in 1900, in a ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Watson, once a speechwriter for former Australian prime minister Paul ...

Recent news reports quoted former Equifax CEO Richard Smith, when appearing before Congress, as saying, “Mistakes were made.” Besides vying for Understatement of the Year, that statement is yet ...

University of Sydney provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU. Politics is a language game: in any given context, who gets what, when and how invariably depends on how things with no ...

For the last few years, reasonable people of various ideological leanings have been lamenting the scourge that is the word “problematic.” Cropping up particularly in online discussions about social ...

Weasel words: “Words or statements that are intentionally ambiguous or misleading.” Concise Oxford English Dictionary 1635 (11th ed. rev. 2008). Odyssey contracted with the U.S. Army Corps of ...