Meaning of wooden language | Babel Free

Definitions

Speech or writing that is overly abstract, vague, metaphorical or pretentious in order to avoid addressing salient issues.

derogatory, informal, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“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.”

“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.”

CEFR level