Don Watson, author of Death Sentence of the English Language, has published Watson’s Dictionary of Weasel Words: contemporary cliches, cant and management jargon. Like a weasel sucking the yolk from an egg while leaving the shell intact, the champions of “weasel words” suck the meaning out of a word.
I received my 2006 diary from Watson’s stable, except its called an “Event Empowerment Tool.”
Read more about this fascinating topic at http://www.weaselwords.com.au/
“Event empowerment tool” — I love it.
I was once taken on a tour of a “new town”, and commented on an architectural feature of a block of flats, and the tour guide said that the architect would be very upset if he had heard me call them flats. They were “multiple-level dwelling units”, that’s what.
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