{"id":1239,"date":"2007-08-01T13:42:28","date_gmt":"2007-08-01T13:42:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/2007\/08\/01\/about-weasel-words-hey-john-wesilheued\/"},"modified":"2007-08-01T13:42:28","modified_gmt":"2007-08-01T13:42:28","slug":"about-weasel-words-hey-john-wesilheued","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/about-weasel-words-hey-john-wesilheued\/","title":{"rendered":"About &#8220;Weasel Words&#8221;: Hey John Wesilheued!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.zappa.com\/stufftoget\/wallpaper\/images\/downloads\/Weasels_Ripped_tnail.jpg\" alt=\"weasal\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Same word root as Bison? wow.<br \/>\nAnd the egg-sucking derivation is classy, too.<\/p>\n<p>weasel<br \/>\nO.E. weosule, wesle &#8220;weasel,&#8221; from P.Gmc. *wisulon (cf. O.N. visla, M.Du. wesel, Du. wezel, O.H.G. wisula, Ger. Wiesel), <strong>probably related to P.Gmc. *wisand- &#8220;bison&#8221;<\/strong> (see bison), with a base sense of &#8220;stinking animal,&#8221; because both animals have a foul, musky smell (cf. L. vissio &#8220;stench&#8221;). The verb <strong>&#8220;to deprive (a word or phrase) of its meaning&#8221; is first attested 1900, so used because the weasel sucks out the contents of eggs, leaving the shell intact<\/strong>; the sense of &#8220;extricate oneself (from a difficult place) like a weasel&#8221; is first recorded 1925; that of &#8220;to evade and equivocate&#8221; is from 1956. A John Wesilheued (&#8220;John Weaselhead&#8221;) turns up on the Lincolnshire Assize Rolls for 1384, but the name seems not to have endured, for some reason.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/help\/etymon.html\">Online Etymology Dictionary<\/a>, \u00a9 2001 Douglas Harper<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Same word root as Bison? wow. And the egg-sucking derivation is classy, too. weasel O.E. weosule, wesle &#8220;weasel,&#8221; from P.Gmc. *wisulon (cf. O.N. visla, M.Du. wesel, Du. wezel, O.H.G. wisula, Ger. Wiesel), probably related to P.Gmc. *wisand- &#8220;bison&#8221; (see bison), with a base sense of &#8220;stinking animal,&#8221; because both animals have a foul, musky smell<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wfjh-jZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redmonk.com\/jgovernor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}