This paper explore the common features of austerity discourse beyond national and partisan boundaries. It relies on an in-depth essay uniting lexicography and the study of metaphors in speeches of the Italian and Spanish heads of government between 2011 and 2013. Whilst using recent work handling the legitimation of economic policies, this inquiry takes a step back in order to elucidate the wider discourse on which austerity policies rely and to clarify the common patterns in diverse political actors’ discourse. Rooted in a post-foundational approach, it distinguishes various discursive strategies for depoliticising economic matters (e.g. the construction of an economic common sense, the appeal to external constraints and the metaphorical naturalisation of economics), thus revealing their political nature. The ‘restructuring’ and ‘rescaling’ of social practices are distinguished as the chief mechanisms with respect to the articulation of such a wider hegemonic discourse.