onomatapology
n. An apology that sounds sincere but falls short of being an actual apology.
Etymology
Examples
2011 (earliest)
If you believe Brett Ratner derisively said "rehearsing is for fags" during a Tower Heist Q&A the other day because…because he didn't give adequate thought to "the power of language" (as he now claims in a classic celebrity "onomatapology," as we might call a statement that mimics the sound of an apology whether it is one or not), you give him both too much and too little credit.
—Linda Holmes, “Yes, The Oscars Should Boot Brett Ratner,” NPR, November 08, 2011
Notes
One of the hallmarks of our celebrity-obsessed age is the ritual apology after the car crash, drunken tirade, or racist tweet. Or, I should say, it's the non-apology that follows the celebrity's heinous behavior, because apologies that aren't exactly sincere are the norm. These psuedo sorrys are so widespread that they’ve even got their own Wikipedia page (see the entry “Non-apology apology”). Names for this behavior abound and they include nonpology, notpology, nopology, fauxpology, unpology, and sorry not sorry. The most clever is surely onomatapology, a blend of the words onomatopoeia, “a word formed by imitation of the sound of the object it represents,” and apology. Too obscure? If so, I apologize for any harm I may have caused.
Filed Under