Facebook Manipulated the News You See to Appease Republicans, Insiders Say

But the American Heritage Dictionary says it also means “a word used to qualify a statement so as to make it potentially misleading“, so the phrase “everybody knew” would count as weasel words. (The phrase “weasel words” has a great etymology that others can look up on their own...)

Many examples of the first definition of weasel words can be found in the British comedies “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister”. E.g.

Sir Humphrey: Unfortunately, although the answer was indeed clear, simple, and straightforward, there is some difficulty in justifiably assigning to it the fourth of the epithets you applied to the statement, inasmuch as the precise correlation between the information you communicated and the facts, insofar as they can be determined and demonstrated, is such as to cause epistemological problems, of sufficient magnitude as to lay upon the logical and semantic resources of the English language a heavier burden than they can reasonably be expected to bear.

Hacker: Epistemological — what are you talking about?

Sir Humphrey: You told a lie.