Euphemism
A
euphemism is an expression intended by the speaker to be less offensive, disturbing, or troubling to the listener than the word or phrase it replaces, or in the case of
doublespeak to make it less troublesome for the speaker.
When a phrase is used as a euphemism, it often becomes a metaphor whose literal meaning is dropped. Euphemisms are often used to hide unpleasant or disturbing ideas, even when the literal term for them is not necessarily offensive. This type of euphemism is used in
public relations and
politics, where it is sometimes disparagingly called doublespeak. There are also superstitious euphemisms, based (consciously or subconsciously) on the idea that words have the power to bring bad fortune (for example, not speaking the word "cancer"; see
Etymology and
Common examples below) and religious euphemisms, based on the idea that some words are sacred, or that some words are spiritually imperiling (
taboo; see
Etymology and
Religious euphemisms below).
The word
euphemism comes from the
Greek word
euphemos, meaning "auspicious/good/fortunate speech/kind" which in turn is derived from the Greek root-words
eu (ευ), "good/well" +
pheme (φήμη) "speech/speaking". The
eupheme was originally a word or phrase used in place of a religious word or phrase that should not be spoken aloud. The primary example of taboo words requiring the use of a euphemism are the unspeakable names for a deity, such as
Persephone,
Hecate,
Nemesis or
Yahweh. By speaking only words favorable to the gods or spirits, the speaker attempted to procure good fortune by remaining in good favor with them.
Historical linguistics has revealed traces of
taboo deformations in many languages. Several are known to have occurred in
Indo-European languages, including the original
Proto-Indo-European words for
bear (
*rtkos),
wolf (
*wlkwos), and
deer (originally,
hart). In different Indo-European languages, each of these words has a difficult
etymology because of taboo deformations — a euphemism was substituted for the original, which no longer occurs in the language. An example is the Slavic root for
bear—
*medu-ed-, which means "honey eater".
In some
languages of the Pacific, using the name of a deceased chief is taboo. Amongst Australian Aboriginal people, it was forbidden to ever use the name or image of the deceased, so that today the Australian Broadcasting Commission publishes an apology to indigenous people for using names or images of people who have recently died. Since people are often named after everyday things, this leads to the swift development of euphemisms. These languages have a very high rate of vocabulary change. (Dyen, Isidore, A. T. James & J. W. L. Cole. 1967. Language divergence and estimated word retention rate. Language 43/1: 150-171.)
Euphemisms often evolve over time into
taboo words themselves through a process described by
W.V.O. Quine, and more recently dubbed 'the
euphemism treadmill' by
Steven Pinker. (
cf. Gresham's Law in
economics).
Words originally intended as euphemisms may lose their euphemistic value, acquiring the negative connotations of their referents. In some cases, they may be used mockingly and become
dysphemistic.
For example, the term "
concentration camp" to describe camps used to house civilian prisoners was used by the British during the
Second Boer War, primarily because it sounded bland and inoffensive. However, after the
Third Reich used the expression to describe their
death camps, the term gained enormous negative connotation. Since then, new terms have been invented as euphemisms for them, such as
internment camps, resettlement camps, etc.
Also, in some versions of English,
toilet room, itself a euphemism, was replaced with
bathroom and
water closet, which were replaced (respectively) with
rest room and
W.C.Connotations easily change over time.
Idiot was once a neutral term, and
moron a similar one. Negative senses of a word tend to crowd out neutral ones, so the word
retarded was pressed into service to replace them. Now that too is considered rude, used commonly as an insult of a person, thing, or idea. As a result, new terms like
mentally challenged or
special have replaced
retarded. In a few decades, calling someone
special may well be a grave insult, and indeed among many young school students, it is already a common term of abuse, if not yet a particularly grave one. A similar progression occurred with
lame â†' crippled â†' handicapped â†' disabled â†' differently-abledalthough in that case the meaning has also broadened (and hence has been narrowed with adjectives, which themselves have been euphemised); a dyslexic or colorblind person would not be termed
crippled. In the early 1960s,
Bill Veeck, who was missing part of a leg, argued against the then-favored euphemism "handicapped", saying he preferred "crippled" because it was merely descriptive and did not carry connotations of limiting one's capability the way "handicapped" (and, in fact, all of its subsequent euphemisms) seem to do. In some cases, "differently-abled" would be the only accurate description of a person in any case: individuals with
Asperger Syndrome (an
Autistic spectrum disorder) often have an above-average
IQ and occasionally exhibit
savant abilities, but may be
mind blind and tend to have a much lower
EQ than non-autistics, resulting in significantly affected communication and socialization abilities. Likewise wrestler
Kyle Maynard, a congenital amputee with only vestigial arms and legs, is demonstrably not "disabled" by his condition.
It can apply to naming of racial or ethnic groups as well, when proposed euphemisms become successively "corrupted". For example:
colored â†' negro â†' black â†' African-American â†' People of ColorThis particular treadmill was mocked by
Sinbad on
Saturday Night Live, wherein a white character during a
U.S. Civil War sketch refers to African-Americans as "Negroes", to which Sinbad replies, "Please, we prefer the more respectable 'boy.'"
George Carlin gave a famous monologue of how he thought euphemisms can undermine appropriate attitudes towards serious issues such as the evolving terms describing the medical problem of the cumulative mental trauma of soldiers in high stress situations:
Shell shock (World War I) â†' battle fatigue (World War II)â†' Operational exhaustion (Korean War) â†' Post-traumatic stress disorder (Vietnam War)He contended as the name of the condition became more complicated and seemingly arcane, sufferers of this condition have been taken less seriously as people with a serious illness and were given poorer treatment as a result.
A complementary "
dysphemism treadmill" exists, but is more rarely observed. One modern example is the word "
sucks". "That sucks" began as American slang for "that is very unpleasant", and is shorthand for "that sucks cock", referring to
fellatio. It developed over the late-
20th century from being an extremely vulgar phrase to near-acceptability. Likewise,
scumbag, which was originally a reference to a used
condom, now is a fairly mild epithet.
Many euphemisms fall into one or more of these categories:
* Terms of foreign and/or technical origin (
derriere,
copulation,
perspire,
urinate,
security breach,
mierda de toro,
prophylactic,
feces occur)
* Abbreviations (
SOB for "son of a bitch",
BS for "bullshit",
TS for "tough shit",
SOL for "shit outta luck",
BFD for "big fucking deal")
** Abbreviations using a "phonetic" alphabet (
Charlie Foxtrot for "Cluster fuck",
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Oscar for "What the fuck, over?",
Bravo Sierra for "bullshit" -
See Military slang)
** Plays on abbreviations (
barbecue sauce for "bull shit",
sugar honey ice tea for "shit",
Maryland farmer for "motherfucker",
catch (or see) you next Tuesday for "cunt")
* Abstractions (
it,
the situation,
go,
left the company,
do it)
* Indirections (
behind,
unmentionables,
privates,
live together,
go to the bathroom,
sleep together)
* Mispronunciation (
goldarnit,
dadgummit,
freakin,
shoot -
See minced oath)
There is some disagreement over whether certain terms are or are not euphemisms. For example, sometimes the phrase
visually impaired is labeled as a
politically correct euphemism for
blind. However, visual impairment can be a broader term, including, for example, people who have partial sight in one eye, a group that would be excluded by the word
blind.
There are three
antonyms of euphemism:
dysphemism,
cacophemism, and
power word. The first can be either offensive or merely humorously deprecating with the second one generally used more often in the sense of something deliberately offensive. The last is used mainly in arguments to make a point seem more correct.
Euphemisms may be formed in a number of ways.
Periphrasis or
circumlocution is one of the most common -- to "speak around" a given word, implying it without saying it. Over time, circumlocutions become recognized as established euphemisms for particular words or ideas.
To alter the pronunciation or spelling of a
taboo word (such as a
swear word) to form a euphemism is known as
taboo deformation. There are an astonishing number of taboo deformations in English, of which many refer to the infamous
four-letter words. In
American English, words which are unacceptable on television, such as
fuck, may be represented by deformations such as
freak — even in children's cartoons. Some examples of
Cockney rhyming slang may serve the same purpose — to call a person a
berk sounds less offensive than to call him a
cunt, though
berk is short for
Berkeley Hunt which rhymes with
cunt.
Bureaucracies such as the
military and large
corporations frequently spawn euphemisms of a more deliberate (and to some, more sinister) nature. Organizations coin
doublespeak expressions to describe objectionable actions in terms that seem neutral or inoffensive. For example, a term used for radiation leaked from an improperly operated
nuclear power plant is
sunshine units. Similarly, employees of the fast-food chain
McDonald's refer to putting any food into a
microwave as "putting it in the
queue".
Military organizations frequently do kill people, sometimes deliberately and sometimes by mistake; in doublespeak, the first may be called
neutralizing the target and the second
collateral damage. Violent destruction of non-state enemies may be referred to as
pacification. A common term when a
soldier is accidentally killed (
buys the farm) by their own side is
friendly fire. ("Buy the farm" has its own interesting
history.) e.g. [
1]
Execution is an established euphemism referring to the act of putting a person to death, with or without judicial process. It originally referred to the execution, i.e. the carrying out, of a
death warrant, which is an authorization to a sheriff, prison warden, or other official to
put a named person to death. In legal usage,
execution can still refer to the carrying out of other types of orders; for example, in U.S. legal usage, a
writ of execution is a direction to enforce a
civil money judgment by seizing property. Likewise,
lethal injection itself is a euphemism for putting the convict to death by poisoning.
Likewise, industrial unpleasantness such as
pollution may be toned down to
outgassing or
runoff — descriptions of physical processes rather than their damaging consequences. Some of this may simply be the application of precise technical terminology in the place of popular usage, but beyond precision, the advantage of technical terminology may be its lack of emotional undertones, the disadvantage being the lack of
real-life context.
Profane words and expressions are generally taken from three areas:
religion,
excretion, and
sex. While
profanities themselves have been around for some time, their limited use in public and by the
media has only in the past decade become socially acceptable, and there are still many expressions which cannot be used in polite conversation. The common marker of acceptability would appear to be use on
prime-time television or in the presence of children. Thus,
damn (and most other religious profanity) is acceptable, and as a consequence, euphemisms for religious profanity have taken on a very stodgy feeling. Excretory profanity such as
piss and
shit may be acceptable in adult conversation, while euphemisms like
Number One and
Number Two are preferred for use with children. Most sexual terms and expressions either remain unacceptable for general use or have undergone radical rehabilitation (
penis and
vagina, for instance).
Religious euphemisms
Euphemisms for
God and
Jesus are used by Christians to avoid taking the name of God in a vain oath, which would violate one of the
Ten Commandments.
Jews say "Adonai" ('my master') when praying or reading scriptures that directly refer to God by name as the name of God is
ineffable and thus must not be spoken. When using the term in
English, some religious Jews will write "G-d," leaving out the
vowel, a practice also used in the written
Hebrew (though this is because Hebrew is always written without vowels). Because of this, the "name" of God in ancient Hebrew writings is
transliterated as JHVH, YHVH, or YHWH, known as the
tetragrammaton, without vowels so that there is no agreement as to how the name would be pronounced if spoken, leading to such guesses as
Yahweh and
Jehovah.
Euphemisms for
hell,
damnation, and the
devil, on the other hand, are often used to avoid invoking the power of the adversary.
Québecois French slang is particularly noted for use of religious euphemisms, many of which have an obscene loading.
Excretory euphemisms
While
urinate and
defecate are not euphemisms, they are used almost exclusively in a clinical sense. The basic
Anglo-Saxon words for these functions,
piss and
shit, are considered vulgarities, despite the use of
piss in the
King James Bible (in Isaiah 36:12 and elsewhere).
The word
manure, referring to animal feces used as
fertilizer for plants, literally means "worked with the hands", alluding to the mixing of manure with earth. Several
zoos market the byproduct of
elephants and other large
herbivores as
Zoo Doo, and there is a brand of
chicken manure available in garden stores under the name
Cock-a-Doodle Doo. Similarly, the string of letters
BS, or the word
bull, often replaces the word
bullshit in polite society.
There are any number of lengthier
periphrases for excretion used to excuse oneself from company, such as to
powder one's nose or to
see a man about a horse (or
dog). Slang expressions which are neither particularly euphemistic nor
dysphemistic, such as
take a leak, form a separate category.
Sexual euphemisms
The Latin term
pudendum and the Greek term
αιδοίον (
aidoion) for the genitals literally mean "shameful thing".
Groin and
crotch refer to a larger region of the body, but are euphemistic when used to refer to the genitals. Euphemisms are more common in reference to sexual practices or orientations, particularly non-heterosexual ones, as shown in this quote from the UK version of
Queer as Folk, which includes both euphemisms and dysphemisms regarding male homosexuality:
Because I'm queer, I'm gay, I'm homosexual, I'm a poof, I'm a poofter, I'm a ponce, I'm a bum boy, batty boy, backside artist, bugger, I'm bent, I am that arse bandit, I lift those shirts, I'm a faggot-arsed, fudgepackin', shitstabbin' uphill gardener. I dine at the downstairs restaurant, I dance at the other end of the ballroom, I'm Moses and the parting of the red cheeks. I fuck and am fucked, I suck and am sucked, I rim them and wank them, and every single man has had the fucking time of his life, and I'm not a pervert.
Virtually all other
sexual terms are still considered profane and unacceptable for use even in a euphemistic sense.
The English language contains numerous euphemisms related to dying,
death,
burial, and the people and places which deal with death. The practice of using euphemisms for death is likely to have originated with the
"magical" belief that to speak the word 'death' was to invite death; where to "draw Death's attention" is the ultimate bad-fortune -- a common theory holds that death is a taboo subject in most English-speaking cultures for precisely this reason. It may be said that one is not dying, but
fading quickly because
the end is near. People who have died are referred to as having
passed away or
passed or
departed.
Deceased is a euphemism for 'dead', and sometimes the
deceased is said to have
gone to a better place, but this is used primarily among the religious with a concept of
heaven.
There are many euphemisms for the dead body, some polite and some profane, as well as
dysphemisms such as
worm food, or
dead meat. The corpse was once referred to as
the shroud (or house or tenement) of clay, and modern funerary workers use terms such as
the loved one (title of a
novel about
Hollywood undertakers by
Evelyn Waugh) or
the dearly departed. (They themselves have given up the euphemism
funeral director for
grief therapist, and hold
arrangement conferences with relatives.) Among themselves, mortuary technicians often refer to the corpse as the
client. A recently dead person may be referred to as "the late
John Doe."
Contemporary euphemisms and dysphemisms for death tend to be quite colorful, and someone who has died is said to have
passed away,
passed on,
checked out,
bit the big one,
kicked the bucket,
bitten the dust,
bought the farm,
cashed in their chips,
croaked,
given up the ghost (originally a more respectful term),
gone south,
shuffled off this mortal coil (from
William Shakespeare's
Hamlet), or
assumed room temperature. When buried, they may be said to be
pushing up daisies or
sleeping the big sleep or
taking a dirt nap or
six feet under. There are hundreds of such expressions in use. (Old
Burma-Shave jingle: "If daisies are your favorite flower, keep pushin' up those miles per hour!")
Euthanasia also attracts euphemisms. One may
put him out of his misery,
put him to sleep, or
have him put down, the latter phrases being used primarily with non-humans.
There are a few euphemisms for killing which are neither respectful nor playful, but rather clinical and detached. Some examples of this type are
terminate,
wet work, to
take care of one or to
take them for a ride, to
do them in, to
off,
frag,
smoke,
whack or
waste someone. To
cut loose (from U.S. Sgt. Massey's account of activities during the American occupation of Iraq) or
open up on someone, means 'to shoot at with every weapon available'.
The
Dead Parrot Sketch from
Monty Python's Flying Circus contains an extensive list of euphemisms for death, referring to the deceased parrot that the character played by
John Cleese purchases (the sketch has led to another euphemism for death: "pining for the fjords", although in the sketch it was used by the shop owner to mean the parrot was
not dead, but was merely quiet and contemplative). A similar passage occurs near the beginning of
The Twelve Chairs, where Bezenchuk, the undertaker, astonishes Vorobyaninov with his classification of people by the euphemisms used to speak of their deaths.
Also a scene in the film Patch Adams features Patch (Robin Williams) dressed in an angel costume, reading out various synonyms and euphemisms for the phrase "to die" to a man dying of cancer. This evolves into a contest between the two men to see who can come up with more, and better, euphemisms, ending when Patch comes up with "and if we bury you ass up, we'll have a place to park my bike".
What distinguishes
doublespeak from other euphemisms is its deliberate usage by governmental, military, or corporate institutions. Doublespeak is in turn distinguished from
jargon in that doublespeak attempts to confuse and conceal the truth, while jargon often provides greater precision to those that understand it (while inadvertently confusing those who do not). An example of the distinction is the use by the military of the word
casualties instead of
deaths — what may appear to be an attempt to hide the fact that people have been killed is actually a precise way of saying "personnel who have been rendered incapable of fighting, whether by being killed, being badly wounded, captured in battle, psychologically damaged, incapacitated by disease, rendered ineffective by having essential equipment destroyed, or disabled in any other way." "Casualties" is used instead of "deaths," not for propagandistic or squeamish reasons, but because most casualties are not dead, but nevertheless useless for waging war.
Proper examples of doublespeak included
taking friendly fire as a euphemism for being attacked by your own troops.
Other common euphemisms include:
*
restroom for
toilet room (the word
toilet was itself originally a euphemism). This is an
Americanism.
*
acting like rabbits,
making love to,
getting it on,
doing it, or
sleeping with for
having sexual intercourse with*
motion discomfort bag and
air-sickness bag for
vomit bag or
barf bag*
sanitary landfill for
garbage dump (and a temporary garbage dump is a
transfer station), also often called a
Civil Amenity in the UK
*
third-party unauthorized use for
cracking*
ill-advised for
very poor or bad*
pre-owned vehicles for
used cars*
correctional facility for
prison*
the big C for
cancer (in addition, some people whisper the word when they say it in public, and doctors have euphemisms to use in front of patients, e.g. "c.a.")
*
bathroom tissue,
t.p., or
bath tissue for
toilet paper (Usually used by toilet paper manufacturers)
*
custodian or
caretaker for
janitor (also originally a euphemism — in Latin, it means
doorman.)
*
sanitation worker (or, sarcastically,
sanitation engineer) for "garbage man" (also known as
dustman in the UK)
*
Where can I wash my hands? or
Where can I powder my nose? for
Where can I find a toilet?. (This is also an
Americanism. A person asking this in Europe may be directed to a room that contains only a washbasin and no toilet.)
*
Percussive maintenance for
fixing by hittingThese lists might suggest that most euphemisms are well-known expressions. Often euphemisms can be somewhat situational; what might be used as a euphemism in a conversation between two friends might make no sense to a third person. In this case, the euphemism is being used as a type of
innuendo. As an example, in the
television series
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the Banks family (who are black) discuss Aunt Janice's fiance, who happens to be white, using
tall as a euphemism for
white. Will, who apparently doesn't catch on, remarks that he is the only one who seems to notice the new boyfriend is white. In
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a king tries to get his son to marry an unattractive woman by claiming that she has "huge... tracts of land". This is either a reference to her wealth or her large breasts. The second meaning has become popular, especially through
Peter David's use of the term in the first issue of
Young Justice when Robin used the term to describe
Mighty Endowed.
The inflation of occupational titles is similar to the euphemism treadmill. For instance, the
engineering professions have traditionally resisted the tendency by other technical trades to appropriate the prestige of the title
engineer. Most people calling themselves
software engineers or
network engineers are not, in fact, accredited in engineering (and in many jurisdictions it is techically illegal to use the term without a currently valid State certification, though widely unenforced). Extreme cases, such as
sanitation engineer for
janitor are cited humorously more often than they are used seriously.
In the
television cartoon series "
The Flintstones", Fred takes a job as the live-in
superintendent of a large apartment building and is given a title using the word
engineer to make his job sound more important than it actually is. As he and his wife are moving in, a policeman is about to write him a
parking ticket for being illegally parked in front of the building. He informs the officer that he is (as the building's owner referred to him) the
"Resident Stationary Engineer" for the building. The cop turns to him and says, "I don't care if you
are the janitor, move this car now!"
Less extreme cases, such as
custodian for
janitor, are considered more terms of respect than euphemisms.
The word euphemism itself can be used as a euphemism. In the animated short
It's Grinch Night (See
Dr. Seuss), a child asks to go to the
euphemism, where
euphemism is being used as a euphemism for
outhouse. This euphemistic use of "euphemism" originally occurred in the play
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? where a character requests, "Martha, will you show her where we keep the, uh, euphemism?". It is analogous to the 18th-century use of
unmentionables for
underpants.
*
Minced oaths
*
Bypassing*
Politeness*
Doublespeak*
Spin (public relations)*
Toilet humour*
The F-word*
Framing (communication theory)*
Code word (figure of speech)*
Bowdlerisation*
Sexual slang*
Benveniste, Émile, "Euphémismes anciens and modernes", in:
Problèmes de linguistique générale, vol. 1, pp. 308-314. [originally published in:
Die Sprache, I (1949), pp. 116-122].
* Rawson, Hugh,
A Dictionary of Euphemism & Other Doublespeak, second edition, 1995. ISBN 0517702010
* R.W.Holder:
How Not to Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms,
Oxford University Press, 501 pages, 2003. ISBN 0198607628
*
Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression (ISSN US 0363-3659)
*
Propaganda critic: Euphemisms*
Dead and Buried: Death Euphemisms*
Language & Power: Euphemism and dysphemism*
Euphemism as a figure of speech
