Back in my day, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, “weasel words” were “words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful h

Back in my day, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, “weasel words” were “words and phrases aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague or ambiguous claim has been communicated”...so sort of the opposite of the unprovable hyperbole of “everyone knew”. The phraseology isn’t vague or ambiguous, just absurd. But the American Heritage Dictionary says it also means “a word used to qualify a statement so as to make it potentially misleading“, so the phrase “everybody knew” would count as weasel words. (The phrase “weasel words” has a great etymology that others can look up on their own...) Many examples of the first definition of weasel words can be found in the British comedies “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister”. E.g. Sir Humphrey: Unfortunately, although the answer was indeed clear, simple, and straightforward, there is some difficulty in justifiably assigning to it the fourth of the epithets you applied to the statement, inasmuch as the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts, insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated, is such as to cause epistemological problems, of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear. Hacker: Epistemological — what are you talking about? Sir Humphrey: You told a lie.