The day that my review copies of Don Watson’s Weasel Words and Julian Burnside’s Word Watching arrived, my wife showed me a newspaper article in which Buckingham Palace reported that Princess Anne had been involved in an air proximity incident. In plain English, this meant that a Typhoon Combat Jet and the Princess’s Royal Squadron BAE 125 had come as close as a curtsey to smashing each other into a million pieces over Morecambe Bay. Had this happened, there would have been, to quote Weasel Words, a negative health consequence for the Princess. From Word Watching I learned that the equivalent American term is Midair Passenger Exchange, an encounter that is almost invariably followed by aluminium rain.
This is as good a way as any of seeing how these two very different books at times converge, brought into the same arena by shared interests—in this case, the capacity for meaning to be deliberately fudged for whatever sinister or mad reason. But whereas that is one of Burnside’s interests, it is the core of Watson’s (as distinct, he would want it noted, from his non-core interests): ‘ …weasel words, clichés and jargon (are used) as shields against attack, as camouflage to escape detection, as smokescreens or vapour to blind or repel anyone sniffing out the truth about us’.
As with great art, Weasel Words pleases with moments of familiarity and sudden surprises. It is comforting, for example, to come across Icon. You confidently expect it and, sure enough, not only does it appear, but it is nailed:
1 Image or representation, usually of a saint or other sacred Christian personage. … 2 Computer symbol. 3 Any well-known footballer or cricketer, the Big Pineapple, the Crocodile Man … [more than 40 further examples follow] 4 Anything or anyone you say. (Make your own list).
And it is surprising, but wonderful, to come across ‘We’, among whose alternative meanings are:
‘1 You and me. 2 Me. 3 Me and the wife. 4 My government, cabinet, regime, cabal, junta, reich, etc. 5 Not you. Not the High Court. Not the Navy. Not the United Nations. Not the captain of a Norwegian ship. Not anyone who doesn’t suit me.’
Weasel Words is brilliantly witty, often hilarious, especially read aloud at the dinner table whenever someone inadvertently or worse still deliberately falls back on a weasel word. But don’t let your own delight and laughter lead you to under-rate it: