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sounds similar to weasel words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word

There's another term, i'm sure, because politicians use it all the time; "I never said X" when it was very heavily implied, and the listener was led down the garden path to the conclusion, only to find out the conclusion is bitter and unpleasant. The speaker can say "oh, that's your own biases/misconceptions/dogma, i never said <something extremely specific>"

I'm in the weeds here, but a simple analogy would be: "I don't like sunny days without clouds or fog." and i say "why don't you like blue skies?" and they say "i never said that" when the salient points of a sunny day with no clouds or fog are 1) there's a sun, and 2) the sky is blue.




Prime example: "Collective Soul was such an under-rated band",

contradictory reply: "not at all, they were Grammy-nominated and had N number-one hits",

weasel reply: "that's not what I meant... lately they haven't been paid enough attention. way to miss the point, $NAME_CALLING".

It's a way to say "I like them" without having to refute anything other than supporting comments, aka a weasel-word.




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