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Feb 15, 2024
This week’s theme
Words coined after animals

This week’s words
reptilian
eager beaver
testudinal
weasel
big fish

weasel
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weasel

PRONUNCIATION:
(WEE-zuhl)

MEANING:
noun:1. Any of various small slender carnivorous mammals of the genus Mustela.
 2. A sneaky, cunning person.
verb intr.:1. To evade an obligation.
 2. To be evasive by using ambiguous or misleading words.

ETYMOLOGY:
From Old English wesule. Earliest documented use: c. 450 CE.

USAGE:
“The CEO of the Washington Post Company, Don Graham, and Mark Zuckerberg shook hands over the deal, making a verbal contract, but when Zuckerberg weaseled out of it to take a better offer, Graham, out of kindness to a young fella just starting out, simply let him walk away.”
Jill Lepore; Hard News; The New Yorker; Jan 28, 2019.

See more usage examples of weasel in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. -Galileo Galilei, physicist and astronomer (15 Feb 1564-1642)

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