And the winner is “rhetoric”.

Why? Because its primary meaning according to the Oxford Dictionary is:

n. the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, esp. the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.

A special usage is as follows:

<SPECIAL USAGE> language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience, but is often regarded as lacking in sincerity or meaningful content: all we have from the opposition is empty rhetoric.

I defy anyone to find a recent example where it is used to mean “effective or persuasive speaking or writing.” Instead, we find it relentlessly and tiresomely overused in its secondary meaning when the speaker or writer has no intention of addressing what was actually contained in the “rhetoric”.