lexicon.weasel-words

What it flags

Vague qualifiers that weaken a statement. A weasel word adds an invisible cognitive load: the reader has to decide whether the claim matters, is true, or measurable. References: Wikipedia style guide (Avoid weasel words), Strunk & White, FALC.

At a glance

Detection

Word-boundary match against a per-language list. Case-insensitive. One diagnostic per occurrence.

Severity bands

Not every weasel word is equally worth changing. The rule sorts its default list into two bands and fires each at a different severity:

• Quantifiers → info. Approximate quantity and frequency markers — EN: some, many, often, various, numerous; FR: quelques, certains, parfois, souvent, la plupart, beaucoup de, peu de, presque, quasiment, environ, à peu près. These are legitimate technical hedging: a spec may honestly say “some drivers” or “fails often under load”. Reporting them as warnings pressures authors to strip them, and prose with every quantifier removed reads as falsely precise — reviewers reject it as over-edited. info keeps them visible without demanding a fix.
• Hedges → warning. Under-confident qualifiers that weaken a claim without informing the reader — EN: just, simply, clearly, obviously, seemingly, arguably, basically, essentially, virtually, rather, quite, sort of, kind of, a bit; FR: plutôt, assez, globalement, généralement, en général, il semble que, il semblerait que, on pourrait dire que, on dit souvent. These carry no measurable content and should be replaced with concrete language or removed.

Custom phrases added via custom_weasels_en / custom_weasels_fr fire at warning. The severity bands are fixed; to silence the rule, add an [[ignore]] entry for lexicon.weasel-words in lucid-lint.toml, or use an inline disable-next-line directive.

• Inline code spans. A hit inside `…` is skipped. Wrap a weasel term in backticks when you are discussing the word itself.
• Directional pairings. rather than (EN) and plutôt que (FR) are conjunctions meaning “instead of” — not hedges — and are skipped.

Parameters

Default lists (v0.1)

• 🇫🇷 quelques, certains, parfois, plutôt, assez, globalement, généralement, souvent, en général, la plupart, il semble que, il semblerait que, on pourrait dire que, on dit souvent, beaucoup de, peu de, presque, quasiment, environ, à peu près
• 🇬🇧 some, many, often, just, simply, clearly, obviously, seemingly, arguably, basically, essentially, virtually, various, numerous, sort of, kind of, a bit, rather, quite, fairly, relatively, mostly, generally

Known false positives

Two patterns still fire in v0.2: straight-quoted terms ("many X" without backticks) and "many X" where X is a concrete noun. Both are queued under F23 on the roadmap. Wrap the quoted term in backticks, or use an inline disable comment, to opt out.

Suppression

Use <!-- lucid-lint disable-next-line lexicon.weasel-words --> when the weasel is intentional (quotation, legitimate subset reference, meta-discussion). See Suppressing diagnostics.

References

• Strunk & White (1999)
• CAN-ASC-3.1:2025

See References for the full bibliography.