Meanings
- 1
Thesaurus
Simplified etymology
Weasel is an Old English word for the animal. Its application to a sneaky person appeared in the late 16th century, influenced by the belief that weasels sucked out birds’ eggs and left empty shells. That image later produced the American phrase weasel words and, in the 1920s, the verb sense “extricate oneself evasively.”
Etymology
From Middle English wesele, from Old English weosule, from Proto-West Germanic *wisulā, from Proto-Germanic *wisulǭ. The verb is from c. 1900, from the supposed cunningness of the weasel.