On Friday, an email crossed my inbox regarding how to write better and weasel words. The term “weasel words” first appeared in a short story by author Stewart Chaplin titled “Stained Glass Political Platform,” published in The Century Magazine June 1900. As a term, weasel words were popularized in a 1916 speech by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. I often write about plastic words being stretched, twisted, and molded to fit situations and distorted and disconnected from their accepted definitions, so I figured it was time to discuss weasel words.
Weasel Words
Weasels words are vague qualifiers like “generally,” “most,” and “probably” that weaken your writing and speaking, reflecting a weak mind and poor logic. Speakers and writers use weasel words to avoid making direct statements, to mystify, and use vocabulary to play linguistic tricks upon the audience. I heard a joke about weasel words and politicians:
“How do you know a politician is lying?
They are speaking!”
How often have you heard a speaker generalize or witnessed a writer probablize and thought, “How does the writer know?” Check the weasel words. Since weasel words have been around for so long, many speechwriters and editors know these tricks and constantly edit them. But, when you can catch the speaker or author in candid moments, that is when you see just how weaselly they are about the facts and their logical conclusions.
Consider for a moment the following three reasons why weasel words are employed. When considering them, remember when you have weaseled on your speeches or writing, and self-evaluate to improve:
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- Uncertainty: You use weasels when you’re confused about your point, or you’re not sure what you want to write. Ambiguous terms allow you to equivocate. The result is you get something on paper, but it is cloudy.
- Fear: You use weasels when afraid of making a bold statement. You may know what you want to write but don’t have the depth. These words give you an out.
- Deniability: You use weasels to protect yourself or dodge taking a stand. If you don’t say anything firm, the thinking goes, you cannot be wrong.
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As I have been writing on this topic, I have considered my writing and speaking habits and improved self-editing. I am not afraid, uncertain, or need deniability, but I desire to assert more confidently, speak and write more authoritatively, and support others through language. Hence, the need to understand language and improve how I speak and write.
Examples of Weasel Words
Frankly, I was surprised at some of the weasel words that made the various lists of weasel words found across the Internet. Some weasel words are absolute and are fully supported, others might be conditional weasel words based upon the conversation, and others might not be weasel words at all. Now, out of all that blathering about weasel words, which would you edit as weaselly statements? Yes, I wrote that on purpose!
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Well |
Experts said | Experts have claimed | Experts insist |
| Research proves | Research shows | Research concludes | Researchers claim |
| Often | Probably | Possibly | Some |
| Many | Could be | With all due respect | Usually |
| Basically | Somehow | Virtually | Just |
Once identified, what does a person do? Writers have it easier, for they can revise and edit.
An author can delete the weasel word following the pattern below:
Read the resulting statement to see if it works.
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- If the message without weasels is confusing …
Get clarity with your ideas. Determine what you want to say and then say it! - If the statement without weasels is too bold …
Do you have the authority to make this statement; yes, leave it alone. No, quote the authoritarian, and use a reference. - If the resulting statement without weasels has no substance …
Ask yourself whether or not you have something to say. If not, delete the sentence. If so, see the first bullet point again, clarify your ideas, and keep editing.
- If the message without weasels is confusing …
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Speaking and eliminating weasel words requires planning. You have to prepare what you want to say carefully, plan your audience, prepare and practice delivering your points, and repeat until it feels comfortable. Speaking requires remaining consciously aware, listening to yourself, listening to questions, and making choices. Many choices will be made in the preparation and planning stages, and these planning sessions preparing to speak remain critical to mentally speaking to convince.
However, experience has proven that writing rules work well with speaking, in preparing and planning the message.
Speak aloud the statement to see if it works.
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- If the message without weasels is confusing …
Get clarity with your ideas. Determine what you want to say and then say it! - If the statement without weasels is too bold …
Do you have the authority to make this statement; yes, leave it alone. No, quote the authoritarian, and use a reference. - If the resulting statement without weasels has no substance …
Ask yourself whether or not you have something to say. If not, delete the sentence. If so, see the first bullet point again, clarify your ideas, and keep editing.
- If the message without weasels is confusing …
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Having spoken publicly and talked to other speakers, it was interesting to see those who spoke well and admitted to speaking into a mirror and those who spoke okay and did not practice the speech verbally. I learned this data point, the Rule of 7-P’s came forcibly to mind, “Proper, Prior, Planning, Prevents, Purely, Poor, Performance.” Practice is part of properly planning to avoid poor performances.
Regardless of delivery through speaking or writing, create the time to edit. Create the time to plan and prepare, rehearse, and carefully edit to communicate powerfully. Stop stooping to being a weasel; you are better than that and deserve to allow yourself the ability to achieve through communicating ideas more clearly and powerfully!
© 2021 M. Dave Salisbury
All Rights Reserved
The images used herein were obtained in the public domain; this author holds no copyright to the images displayed.
Since February 2020, the world has seen 
What was the desired intent of this despicable piece of self-righteous trash? I have had three calls to date from two different VISN’s and VAMC’s requesting me to get vaccinated, neigh demanding me to get vaccinated. Yet, the VA cannot even answer simple questions about my concerns for the vaccination, including future sterility, why vaccinated people are only catching the DELTA variant, how the vaccine interacts with medications already being taken, the neurological issues and heart issues from receiving the vaccine, and the list goes on and on! But the VA wants to send me a letter talking down to me and my intelligence trying to promote the vaccine and claiming this is like serving in the US Military again!
Every one of you should be ashamed! Each one who has sat by and watched your governor or president be the flaccid media mouthpiece of cheap science, faux interest in public health, and have voted to create inflation, destroy businesses, livelihoods, and communities, while cheering the destruction of law and order, you also need to be held accountable for your culpability in this most disgusting and distressing event, COVID-19! I absolutely require your retirement packages, repayment of all funds, and a dishonorable discharge from public service for every one of you! Why have so few of you even asked the simple questions regarding COVID; for example:
COVID
In reading the news today, under the heading of “equity,” we find masturbation taught to first graders, hardcore porn taught to high schoolers, and San Francisco, CA., sliding into lawlessness and chaos. Honestly, I felt my mind trying to explode; yet, life must go on. In several previous posts, I have described how 
For those interested, “unrighteous dominion” is considered to be oppression, pride, vain ambitions, and a host of other contention-increasing actions designed to stay in “power” where the exercise of authority can be abused. For example, the district attorney and staff in San Francisco were informed by those who elected the DA to power that the crime and the lawlessness in the city were hurting them. 
Believe it or not, sex is NEVER free; there will always be consequences. The 1960s sexual revolution has done more harm globally than any other revolution or clash of arms in history, bringing us back to the topic rather forcefully; morality is the only vaccine to envy. But, who decides the morality of a nation, a state, a country, or a city? The electorate as a collective voice selects the morality of that area. The electorate decides the laws through the ballot box in a representative government. In a non-representative government, the king, monarch, dictator, etc., dictate the morality of the population, which is one reason why old countries have histories where immorality was rampant as the people followed the examples of the leaders, not the leader’s words. Want a history lesson in morality and how people copy a leader’s morality, look no further than King Henry VIII of England.
Circling back again to how morality is the vaccine for envy, provided the morals involved in supporting morality are selected carefully and exemplified by leaders. In the discussion on morality, philosophers question if there are absolutes? Absolute right and absolute wrong, or are morals a gray area where time and social pressure keep everything gray? Depending upon your appetite and your ability to control your appetites tends to set your moral convictions.
For example, Playboy and Hustler have made billions of dollars selling sexually explicit content to the masses. Some participate in pornography; others refuse pornography. Those who choose to imbibe in pornography live a fantasy life where no woman will ever be good enough to meet the pictures witnessed and the lurid content from the magazines selling appetite suppression. Both sides of the morality issue will complain they deserve attention and should be free to express their rights. Both are using the same tool, envy, to make their moral stand become a legal standard.
As a kid, I remember the fierce debates over convenience stores being allowed to sell adult content, video stores carrying adult movies, and the continued fight over how much is too much in an R-rated, PG-13 rated, and G-rated movies. Why were these fights and debates occurring; the lude and loose morality of the 1960s perverted sex into being “free,” and morality took a back seat to legal freedoms without accountability and responsibility. Consider the gargantuan awards against cigarette manufacturers; why were these awards so high, poor moral choices, envy, and a refusal to accept that the daily choice of smoking 5-45 cigarettes is going to cost you your health as a consequence.
Is the distinction clear? A right cannot be stripped from you by anyone, ever unless you choose to deny your inalienable rights to that particular right. For example, the 
In most societies, you can purchase and legally become the owner of an item due to the purchase. Thus, liberty allows you to become free to use that purchase however you desire. Until the use of that purchase interferes with someone else’s inalienable rights. For example purchase of a baseball bat is legal, mostly around the world. Use that baseball bat for its intended purposes, i.e., to play baseball or softball, and the government does not infringe upon your liberties. Use that baseball bat outside its intended purposes, to break windows, cause injuries or property damage, and you can lose your liberty and your property.
Thus the confusion and complication in defining and detailing liberties. Liberties can be taken and refused; liberties can be eliminated by government force and social changes. Liberties are not inalienable rights or even a right. You do not have a right to liberty. You may pursue happiness, but achieving happiness is not a right, freedom, or liberty.
Civil liberties are freedoms you pay the government to enjoy. For example, driving a car requires a license. By issuing licenses, the government can control the population, even though driving is considered a privilege, a right, and is often confused with “freedom of the open road,” which is two lies for the price one. Another example is 
Freedoms are often defined as political independence, which is fine insofar as civil liberties are concerned. Freedoms entail several other qualities that the government cannot give, take, invent, or delete. True freedoms do not need legal support from case law to be enjoyed. True freedoms include living without restraints, acting without control or interference, and not being bound by conventions, rules, and authorities. It cannot be stressed enough, even though liberties and freedoms share some components, they are merely similar, not identical. In trying to push liberty and freedom as equivalent, the tyranny of language is discovered to sunshine disinfectant. A right, especially those inalienable rights, are not freedoms or liberties to be granted and removed at the power of authority, and the distinction should be clear.
It has been said that my freedom of speech ends where your nose begins. Thus, I cannot exercise my freedom of speech through physical violence, or I lose my right to speak and, more likely, some freedom and property as well. Thus, the role of responsibility begins with knowing the extent of and limitations formed around rights, freedoms, liberties, and privileges, for ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Our responsibility of living in society is to know the rules that form the laws and the social constraints of that society.
Rights, especially inalienable rights, are yours as provided by a higher power than the government. Liberties are the power to act without constraint, provided your exercise of liberty does not infringe upon the inalienable rights of another. Freedoms rest upon political independence, something feared by every bureaucrat and power-mad politician in history. Privileges are permissions granted by a higher authority to conduct business or fulfill a purpose. Civil liberties are not liberties, but privileges can be taken away by authorities and social changes. Regardless, the role of responsibility is inseparably connected to rights, liberties, freedoms, and privileges. One day, accountability will be demanded for the responsibilities connected to how a person used their liberties, freedoms, rights, and privileges.
Communication presentation is the careful and concise logic behind selecting words to communicate an idea—the rules of grammar and punctuation aid in communicating correctly to enhance the sense and communicate the vision. Language is a grand and glorious tool for sharing ideas, empowering motivation, and building ideas into action items. Yet, for some reason, words have become cheapened by political positions, and I would see this trend cease forthwith. Presenting the first and second principles of language and communication:
Is the fear of the mob so significant that even without a mob, fear is spread, risks must be avoided proactively, and thoughts curtailed? I say NO! I defy the entire argument that word selection can cause exclusion. Why; because understanding is a choice! The only person who can choose to be insulted over a word is you! You own the emotions of the moment, and your emotional choices are not my concern! Do we understand this concept?
But what about those messages specifically designed to inflame, insult, denigrate, and deride? What changed? Nothing! The communication initiator desired to rile the primary audience, deny them this power over you, choose different emotions, and retain the moral high ground. The best response to a communication initiator who wants to rule your emotions is to deny them that power, and then that person goes away as irrelevant.
Like the expanded mind, choice leads to decisions, decision spurs action, and action will result in consequences. How you perceive the effects will drive the next series of choices, decisions, activities, and consequences. Liberty and freedom allow us the glory and the horror of choice and consequence. Thus, I plead with you, stop allowing your emotional decisions to be controlled by others! Cease the turmoil over language, speak simply, communicate clearly, and then rest knowing you have not intentionally caused harm. The audience is left to choose, and if they choose to be offended, those are not your consequences to suffer!
By current count, President Biden has signed 
Unfortunately, the Executive Orders discussed herein are not even the tip of the iceberg of tyranny launched in the first 6-days in office. America’s national security was blown out of the water. Executive orders are issued where legislation is desperately needed, where fair business was stopped when America desperately needs to end the lockdowns and go back to work. Dr. Fauci’s WHO leader, more pandemic actions destined to fail, expanding the size and cost of government in the Executive Branch without a peep from the U.S. House of Representatives asking the President how he plans to pay for expanding government, and so much more.
Rule by Executive Order is tyranny, plain and simple! President Biden is extending the illegal actions of President Obama in issuing Executive Orders that exceed his presidential authorities. Your political party means nothing; your freedoms are being stolen by the occupant who just barely swore to uphold the U.S. Constitution and is blatantly abusing the same! The fraudulent President is proving his insanity is real, and we are only a week into his term of office.
Where are the elected members of the Legislative Branch demanding the President cease and desist? Do you feel represented by the U.S. President? Do you feel confident in the Legislative Branch to scrutinize the Executive Branch and demand correction? Where are the State’s Attorneys’ General filing with the Judicial Branch to halt the tyranny of a power-mad president? Under President Trump, before the Executive Orders were typed, they had litigious actions filed with the court, hearings scheduled, injunctions ready to thwart, and were screaming to the media; why are they silent now? The silence is deafening!
To the Honorable Secretary Robert Wilkie
The VA-OIG recently released a report regarding deficiencies in nursing care and management in the Community Living Center (CLC) at the Coatesville VA Medical Center, Pennsylvania. The inspection team validated some complaints and were unable to validate all complaints because of poor complainant documentation. Having a Tiger Team able to dispatch from your office, carrying your authority, would provide expert guidance in rectifying the situation, monitoring the CLC, and updating you with knowledge needed to answer the legislator’s questions regarding what is happening. The VA-OIG found other issues in their investigation that were not covered under the scope of the investigation, leaving the VA-OIG in a difficult position. Hence, another reason for a Tiger Team being created, to back stop and support the VA-OIG in correcting issues found outside their investigatory scope.
For a decade now, I have been reading how the VA-OIG makes recommendations, but where is the follow-up from the VA-OIG to determine if those recommendations are being followed and applied? Too often there is no return and report feature built into the VA-OIG investigation, as these investigators just do not have the time. Again, this is what a Tiger Team can be doing. Taking action, training leaders, building a better VA, monitoring and reporting, building holistic solutions, and being an extension of your office on the front lines. Essentially using the tools from your office to improve the operations locally, which builds trust between the patients and the care providers, building trust between the families and the VA, and delivering upon the Congressional mandate and VA Mission.
The Tiger Teams need to be led by an organizational psychologist possessing a Ph.D. and a personal stake in seeing the VA improve. The organizational psychologist can build a team of like-minded people to be on the flying squad, and these team members should be subject matter experts in VA policies, procedures, and methods of operation, and should change from time to time. I have met many people from the VA who not only possess the passion, but are endowed with the knowledge of how to help the VA, and I would see the VA succeed. Yet, I am concerned that the VA is not changing, not growing, and not developing the processes and procedures needed to survive, and this is damaging the VA, which leads to wasted money and dead veterans.
We are learning by sad experience that many, especially on college campuses and in professional sports arenas, consider respect to be a one-direction demand, where accountability is not enforced and where the hooligans and terrorists of thought, demand and punctuate their demands with violence. A person, who tries to curtail the thoughts of others with physical, verbal, or emotional abuse, has crossed the line into thought terrorism, and their voice is reduced to nothing, even though mainstream media (MSM) outlets provide these people a soapbox to reach a larger audience. A person, who demands respect to flow to them and refuses to give respect to others, is abusing verbally and emotionally those they refuse to respect.
The engaged learner prepares fully in a constant cycle of learn and teach and needs to be supported in this cycle in order to remain a learner preparing to teach and a teacher preparing to learn. The leader has responsibility for teaching correct principles and embracing the need for the learner to govern himself or herself. Thoughts and beliefs, opinions, and personal preferences cannot and should not be litigated, forced, or coerced. Those, who choose to act in a manner not conducive to a quiet and orderly discussion, diminish themselves, harm themselves, and place themselves outside civilization, like the rabid dogs of the west. The proper response by civilization for those placing themselves in this category, rabid dogs or wolves, remains the same: permanent separation and removal.
When those possessing delegated authority use that authority to denigrate, deride, and destroy, that authority needs to be publically stripped, and the individual forced to make amends concurrent with the laws of the land and the expectations of society. We have come to a point in the laws of America where those with money and powerful political connections (Anthony Weiner) can receive pitiful punishments for dangerous crimes, and those without powerful political friends and money receive far harsher sentences for crimes committed, where standard sentence guidelines include some portion of all of the following: 5-10 years in prison, registering as a sex offender, and fines starting at $50,000 (Lorang, McNiel, & Binder, 2016).
The same is true for the inaction and legal quandary Obama created at the IRS and the VA, managers performed tasks that were incongruent with the law, were not held accountable, thus the president remains culpable.
DNC-Consulting 