Vague qualifiers like 'somewhat,' 'perhaps,' 'a bit,' and 'rather' that weaken your prose by hedging instead of committing.
Weasel words are modifiers and qualifiers that drain the confidence from your sentences. They let you say something without fully saying it - 'she was somewhat angry' instead of 'she was furious,' or 'it was perhaps the worst day' instead of 'it was the worst day.' The name comes from the idea that these words suck the meaning out of a statement the way a weasel supposedly sucks the contents from an egg, leaving an empty shell.
Fiction lives on specificity and commitment. When your narrator hedges with 'a bit' and 'sort of,' the prose feels uncertain of itself, and readers pick up on that uncertainty. Strong writing makes choices. Weasel words are the linguistic equivalent of shrugging mid-sentence.
A nervous, uncertain character should use weasel words in their dialogue and thoughts - that's authentic voice. But your narration shouldn't hedge unless the narrator is a character with reason to be vague.
The goal isn't to make every sentence a bold declaration. Sometimes nuance matters. The fix is replacing vague hedging with specific, concrete detail - not just cranking everything to maximum intensity.
If you find yourself writing 'she felt sort of weird about it,' that's often a sign you haven't figured out what the character actually feels. Stop and dig deeper.
Search your current manuscript for these words: somewhat, rather, quite, perhaps, maybe, a bit, sort of, kind of, slightly, fairly, seemed. For each occurrence, try one of three fixes: delete the weasel word entirely, replace the whole phrase with something specific and concrete, or commit fully to what you were hedging about. Track which fix you use most - that tells you something about your hedging habits.