Wacking Weasel Words

One quality, above all, separates writing from speaking. Speakers can see how people respond to their words. Writers can’t, so they tend to repeat themselves and use all kinds of weasel words to emphasize their points—in the hope that the anonymous reader gets the point.

What’s a weasel word? A word that attempts to emphasize a point but ultimately lacks conviction. When so say something is “really big” (emphatic), you are trying to emphasize magnitude–but you don’t really give the reader much information. Or when you say describe something as “for the most part” (hedge), you are giving yourself wiggle room. When you call someone “strong” (adjective) or say someone walked n”briskly” (adverb), you also leave matters vague. And when you use long, fat, clunky phrases like “ascertain” or “enumerate” (bureaucratese), you may think you sound impressive but you’re really showing how indirect you are. (Kind of like when a politician says “frankly,” you know he’s about to speak less than frankly.)

Let’s look at these weasel words. In this post, we’ll focus on emphatics and hedges. Other posts will explore adjectives and adverbs and bureaucratese.

Emphatics and hedges

Writers use emphatics to say they really, really think something but cannot offer much evidence. Hedges serve the opposite purpose—to argue a point, but hold back in case the proposition proves wrong. Beware of these weasel words: