weaselly
Part of speech: adj
Morphological type: derivation
Etymology: Etymology tree
Proto-Germanic *wisulǭ
Proto-West Germanic *wisulā
Old English weosule
Middle English wēsele
English weasel
Proto-Indo-European *-kos
Proto-Germanic *-gaz
Proto-West Germanic *-g
Old English -iġ
Middle English -y
English -y
English weaselly
From weasel + -y.
Inflected forms:
form: more weaselly
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: weasellier
pos: adj
tags: comparative
form: most weaselly
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: weaselliest
pos: adj
tags: superlative
form: weasely
pos: adj
tags: alternative
Senses:
gloss: Resembling a weasel (in appearance).
pos: adj
examples: The writer had just entered into his eighteenth year, when he met at the table of a certain Anglo-Germanist an individual, apparently somewhat under thirty, of middle stature, a thin and weaselly figure, a sallow complexion, a certain obliquity of vision, and a large pair of spectacles.
“Pretty?”
[…] Mr. Prestcott considered. “Fair to middling. Bit weaselly, if you know what I mean. Wouldn’t have been much without makeup. As it was, she managed to look quite attractive.”
At three minutes past six the door opened to admit the naked, scrawny figure of Tingaling Bell. He had a sharp weasely face and a miserable body on which each bone showed.
On still weasellier, greasier members of the clique.
I lifted the extension, slowly released the button, easing in mid-ring like the weaselliest weasel.
He looks like a shorter, thinner, weasellier version of Tom Jones, and he sure knows how to work a crowd.
That was when the constantly complaining but unseen dog showed itself, if it was actually a dog. The weaselly little creature crawled out from under the couch—more rodential than canine, Pepe thought.
More members arrive. […] Lucifer, small and fat and weasellier (e.g. more like a weasel) than ever, and a few other nonentities whose names Fricka can never remember.
gloss: Devious; cunning; misleading; sneaky.
pos: adj
examples: 1864, W. S. Gilbert, “Sixty-Three and Sixty-Four” originally published in Fun, V (2 January 1864), p. 162, later published in Bab Ballads, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970, p. 37,
With intellect weaselly, artist has easily earned all his bacon and greens by it,
And now that it’s done and all ready for Fun, it’s my duty to say what he means by it.
“Ah was vara weaselly. Ah wasna going home without yon stoof for Captain Harker. Vara coonning ah was.”
Menemencioglu could see no good reason why this weasely document should not be interpreted so as to keep Turkey out of a war in which he and the other Turkish leaders were convinced she could do no better than be uselessly crushed […]
“There’s a poem I like,” Harry said. “By Robert Graves. About cats. Cats, he says, make their point by walking round it. It’s all right for cats. For humans, as you say—weaselly. Why don’t they come out with it?”
It was one of the strangest elections I have ever witnessed, even odder than the 1988 presidential race, when two yahoos named George Bush and Michael Dukakis ended what Hunter S. Thompson declared “The Generation of Swine” by conducting the weaselliest, most vacuous, idealess campaign in the nation’s history.
Charles Lucas received the most weaselly rejection, the directors hoping they might be able to programme his symphony, but adding that they ‘would by no means wish to prevent his so doing elsewhere’.
“Rat-faced. Never trust a reporter. They’re weasellier than rodents!”
So gas rustlers are the horse thieves of the 21st century. The weaselliest are the pump-and-run variety. They strike even in broad daylight. They fill ’er up, then skedaddle without paying.
There’s a weaselly feel to the plan, a sense that tough decisions were postponed even as President Obama warns about our “perfect storm of financial problems.”
If the prompting is necessary, email (or text) is arguably the worst, weaselliest possible way to do it.
Translations: