Wednesday's Random Slang-o-rama: Weasel word

Weasel word seems like it might be a relatively new term; it just has that "feel" to me.

But, a-ha!

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The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer sheds light on my confusion. Whereas weasel out (definition: to back out of a situation or commitment, especially in a sneaky way) dates to mid-1900s, weasel word (a word used to deprive a statement of its force or evade a direct commitment) harkens back to the late 1800s.

Perhaps.

Exploring the internet, I found some disagreement over when first use for weasel word occurred. Word Histories gave a concise explanation of the phrase's origin and pinned its first appearance in print to 1900:

...It alludes to the weasel’s supposed ability to suck the contents out of an egg while leaving the shell superficially intact.

 This phrase was invented and defined by Stewart Chaplin in "The Stained-Glass Political Platform," a short story published in The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (The Century Co., New York) of June 1900.

ThoughtCo agreed, and added that the phrase was popularized in a 1916 speech by Theodore Roosevelt.

The Phrase Finder dipped a toe into possible 19th century use, citing none other than TR himself:

In September 1916, the New York Times published a piece in which Roosevelt refuted the notion that he had stolen the phrase from Chaplin and claimed to have coined it independently in 1879: 

Colonel Roosevelt, on his way here this morning from Portland, Me., told a Times reporter how he happened to use the expression "weasel words" in describing some of President Wilson's utterances months ago. After the expression had been widely quoted, somebody discovered that it had been used years ago by the writer of a magazine article in the Century Magazine, and the Colonel was charged with having plagiarized the writer. 

"About thirty-seven years ago." Colonel Roosevelt said in talking of the origin of the expression. "I was going up a mountain in the Maine woods in a carriage, driven by Dave Sewall. We saw an old man along the roadside. When we passed Dave Sewall said: "That there man can do a lot of funny things with this language of ours. He can take a word and weasel it around and suck the meat out of it like a weasel sucks the meat out of an egg, until it don't mean anything at all. The Colonel said the expression [weasel words] occurred to him when he read some of President Wilson's notes.

Wikipedia (in a VERY comprehensive, detailed, and footnoted entry) offered the same explanation(s). I turned to Google's Ngram, and did find one mention from 1887 in Peterson's Magazine, right here. So maybe in the 1880s—my timeframe of interest—it could have been used in conversation. ("Maybe" being my weasel word of choice, followed closely by "could" because I like to hedge my bets.)

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay