wooden language

English

Etymology

Calque of French langue de bois.

Noun

wooden language (uncountable)

1. (derogatory) Speech or writing that is overly abstract, vague, metaphorical or pretentious in order to avoid addressing salient issues.
   • [1990, Roger Scruton, “Ideologically Speaking”, in Christopher Ricks, Leonard Michaels, editors, The State of the Language, University of California Press, →ISBN, page 126:

     Of more consequence is the emergence of a phenomen which is perhaps peculiar to the modern world: the phenomenon which the French and Russians call “wooden language,” and which we might call, in honor of Orwell's satire, newspeak.]

   • 2022 May 20, Patrick McGuinness, “Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov review – the dangers of dwelling in the past”, in The Guardian‎^[1], →ISSN:

     Life behind the iron curtain was an education in a certain kind of humour: dark, unsentimental and absurd. It understood that jokes had become shortcuts to the truth – apart from the bonus of laughter, they turned the wooden language of the regime against itself in ways that sincerity could not.