Terry Mitchell

Beware of Weasel Words



Posted: Tuesday, March 16, 2010

by Terry Mitchell
http://commenterry.blogs.com

"Weasel words" have commonly come to be known as words and phrases which might seem to be meaningful on the surface, but can be shown to have no real meaning at all, after closer scrutiny. The intent of a user of weasel words is for the listener or reader to hear or read something that they never said or wrote, or something far beyond it.

That way, the speaker or writer cannot be held responsible for their deceit, because they can always make the point that that they never said or wrote ""abc" or "xyz." In other words, the use of weasel words is a form of legal deception. For the full meaning of "weasel words" and many examples, see the entry in Wikipedia.

These words and phrases are commonly used by businesses trying to sell a product, dishonest automobile dealers and real estate agents, politicians, and anyone else intent on deception. A common example of weasel words can be found in the typical ad for a pain reliever. The ad might say something like this: "No other leading brand of pain reliever has been proven to be more effective than Brand X."

Can you recognize the weasel words in that ad? The creator of this ad wants you to think it said that Brand X has been proven to be the most effective of all the leading pain relievers. But that's not what it said. In fact, it really didn't say anything at all, with the possible exception of Brand X being proven to be no worse (or no better) than the other leading pain relievers.

Terry Mitchell is a software engineer, freelance writer, amateur political analyst, and blogger from Virginia, USA. He posts a least one article a day to his blog - http://commenterry.blogs.com - on subjects such as current events, politics, technology, society and culture, religion, health and well-being, self improvement, personal finance, trivia, and sports. He is also the owner of a new privacy-enhanced search engine - http://www.SearchMost.com.

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