spokesweasel

n. a spokesperson; a public relations agent. Subjects: English, Derogatory, Slang

Editorial Note: Weasel, meaning “a treacherous person; a sneak,” dates to at least as early as 1833. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to weasel, meaning “to equivocate; to quibble; to prevaricate” dates to at least as early as 1900, as does the term weasel word.

Comments? | Cites | Permalink | Tell a Friend

Citations: 1992 Michael Tisserand New Orleans Times-Picayune (La.) (July 11) “Jive Talk: How To Be Pauly-Tically Correct” p. E1: With the spokes-weasel of the youth chillin’ with the body electric, the future—or at least the future of comedy—is in fully buff hands. 1993 [Carl Beaudry] Usenet: alt.society.generation-x (Nov. 23) “Re: A Story”: To put it simply, and with no intention of being a generational spokesweasel, just pay back the debts and we’ll do the rest. That’s just about the only political issue that we seem to agree about here. 2004 [CC] Canadian Cynic (Waterloo, Ontario) (Oct. 25): If you really need to see the sorry state of journalism these days, look no farther than today’s White House press gaggle, where spokesweasel Scott McClellan flat out lies in the face of the reporters, and they just sit there and take it. 2004 Karen Traviss Crossing the Line (Nov. 1) p. 347: Eddie’s brain started scrambling for a message that would let News Desk know that the information the Defense Ministry spokesweasels were pumping out was incomplete. 2005 John S. Jacobs Anderson Genehack.org (July 19) “Bob Harris reads the tea leaves”: This garnered the expected responses from Left Blogsvania and Tancredo dispatched a spokesweasel to put some “ah, that was all hypothetical” counterspin on his initial comments. 2005 W. Gardner Selby Austin American-Statesman (Texas) (Oct. 20) “Flacks talk talk, but they have to walk walk, too”: Day to day, spokespeople also never know when they’re going to be besmirched. Jim Suydam, who speaks for Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, had a newspaper dub him “spokesweasel.”

Posted 24 Oct 05 | Permalink | Tell a Friend