diff --git a/src/lxc/lxc_cgroup.c b/src/lxc/lxc_cgroup.c
index e71f37d2b1..d13f2adde5 100644
--- a/src/lxc/lxc_cgroup.c
+++ b/src/lxc/lxc_cgroup.c
@@ -374,7 +374,7 @@ static int virLXCCgroupSetupDeviceACL(virDomainDefPtr def,
             return -1;
     }
 
-    VIR_DEBUG("Device whitelist complete");
+    VIR_DEBUG("Device ACL setup complete");
 
     return 0;
 }
diff --git a/src/qemu/qemu.conf b/src/qemu/qemu.conf
index 404961c53e..f89dbd2c3a 100644
--- a/src/qemu/qemu.conf
+++ b/src/qemu/qemu.conf
@@ -464,7 +464,7 @@
 # What cgroup controllers to make use of with QEMU guests
 #
 #  - 'cpu' - use for scheduler tunables
-#  - 'devices' - use for device whitelisting
+#  - 'devices' - use for device access control
 #  - 'memory' - use for memory tunables
 #  - 'blkio' - use for block devices I/O tunables
 #  - 'cpuset' - use for CPUs and memory nodes
diff --git a/src/qemu/qemu_cgroup.c b/src/qemu/qemu_cgroup.c
index eb0f03d4aa..914bf640ca 100644
--- a/src/qemu/qemu_cgroup.c
+++ b/src/qemu/qemu_cgroup.c
@@ -745,7 +745,7 @@ qemuSetupDevicesCgroup(virDomainObjPtr vm)
     if (rv < 0) {
         if (virLastErrorIsSystemErrno(EPERM)) {
             virResetLastError();
-            VIR_WARN("Group devices ACL is not accessible, disabling whitelisting");
+            VIR_WARN("Group devices ACL is not accessible, disabling filtering");
             return 0;
         }
 
diff --git a/src/util/vircgroup.c b/src/util/vircgroup.c
index bb535df4f2..e20cc71c78 100644
--- a/src/util/vircgroup.c
+++ b/src/util/vircgroup.c
@@ -773,7 +773,7 @@ virCgroupSetPartitionSuffix(const char *path, char **res)
         return ret;
 
     for (i = 0; tokens[i] != NULL; i++) {
-        /* Whitelist the 3 top level fixed dirs
+        /* Special case the 3 top level fixed dirs
          * NB i == 0 is "", since we have leading '/'
          */
         if (i == 1 &&