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date: 16 March 2025

Weasel Words. 

Source:
Garner's Modern English Usage
Author(s):

Bryan Garner

Theodore Roosevelt said, in a speech in St. Louis on May 31, 1916: “One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called weasel words. When a weasel sucks eggs it sucks the meat out of the egg and leaves it an empty shell. If you use a weasel word after another there is nothing left of the other.” Some writers have incorrectly assumed that the ... ...

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