A while back I was in a meeting, and a colleague was talking about a group of people in her department. These people were troublesome, constantly pushing back against the work she was trying to do, and sort of ganging up against her. She spoke about this one particular person, and said this:
I don't want to use the word 'ringleader'...
This is a classic way of being rude about someone. You say you don't want to use a word X to describe them, and then there's a huge implied (or explicit) 'but', and we all know you mean X even if what you've actually said is a minimised or toned-down version of X (for example, 'I don't want to use the word 'ringleader' but they are a bit bossy'). It wouldn't stand up in court, it's so well-known a way of calling someone X. We laughed, in fact, when my colleague did this.
A variant is 'I don't like to use the word X', which has the subtly different meaning that you regret having to use the word, but it does in fact apply to this person. You can accompany this one with a sad shake of your head, as it's such a shame that you've been forced to use such an unpleasant description of the person.
The title of this post is a reference to the use/mention distinction, where in my example the person isn't strictly speaking using the word; they just mention it, but they still achieve some communicative effect with it. There are other ways of mentioning words that are more neutral, like if I'm blogging about a word, but... this is not one of them.
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