It's just one little word, but sometimes you just get lucky in terms of coinage … at least that's what I was thinking when NPR just did a piece on greenwashing, the creation of an illusion of being ecologically responsible, or how ever you'd define it.
To build on the model of the verb to whitewash, you really had to have a color term being used along the lines of green in that current meaning, and then the manipulation or abuse of that term to get the negative sense of whitewash. This one was just inevitable, but the person who invented it must have found it a satisifying moment.
I'd heard the term before, but it's really widespread, judging fromt the g-hits, and used on Swedish websites and elsewhere.
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