A euphemism ( ) is when an expression that could offend or imply something unpleasant is replaced with one that is agreeable or inoffensive.
Etymology
Euphemism comes from the
Greek language word euphemia (εὐφημία) which refers to the use of 'words of good omen'; it is a compound of eû (εὖ), meaning 'good, well', and phḗmē (φήμη), meaning 'prophetic speech; rumour, talk'.
is a reference to the female Greek spirit of words of praise and positivity, etc. The term
euphemism itself was used as a euphemism by the
ancient Greeks; with the meaning "to keep a holy silence" (speaking well by not speaking at all).
Purpose
Avoidance
Reasons for using euphemisms vary by context and intent. Commonly, euphemisms are used to avoid directly addressing subjects that might be deemed negative or embarrassing, such as
death, sex, and excretory bodily functions. They may be created for innocent, well-intentioned purposes or nefariously and cynically, intentionally to deceive, confuse or
Denialism. Euphemisms which emerge as dominant social euphemisms are often created to serve progressive causes.
The Oxford University Press's
Dictionary of Euphemisms identifies "late" as an occasionally ambiguous term, whose nature as a euphemism for dead and an adjective meaning overdue, can cause confusion in listeners.
Mitigation
Euphemisms are also used to mitigate, soften or downplay the gravity of large-scale injustices,
War crime, or other events that warrant a pattern of avoidance in official statements or documents. For instance, one reason for the comparative scarcity of written evidence documenting the exterminations at
Auschwitz, relative to their sheer number, is "directives for the extermination process obscured in bureaucratic euphemisms".
Another example of this is during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, where Russian President
Vladimir Putin, in his speech starting the invasion, called the invasion a "special military operation".
Euphemisms are sometimes used to lessen the opposition to a political move. For example, according to linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used the neutral Hebrew lexical item פעימות peimót (literally 'beatings (of the heart)'), rather than נסיגה nesigá ('withdrawal'), to refer to the stages in the Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank , in order to lessen the opposition of right-wing Israelis to such a move.
Rhetoric
Euphemism may be used as a rhetorical strategy, in which case its goal is to change the valence of a description.
Controversial use
Using a euphemism can in itself be controversial, as in the following examples:
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Affirmative action, meaning a preference for minorities or the historically disadvantaged, usually in employment or academic admissions. This term is sometimes said to be a euphemism for reverse discrimination, or, in the UK, positive discrimination, which suggests an intentional bias that might be legally prohibited, or otherwise unpalatable.
[ Affirmative action as euphemism:
]
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Enhanced interrogation is a euphemism for torture. For example, columnist David Brooks called the use of this term for practices at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere an effort to "dull the moral sensibility".
[ Enhanced interrogation as euphemism:
]
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Online
The use of euphemism online is known as "
algospeak" when used to evade automated online moderation techniques used on Meta and TikTok's platforms.
Algospeak has been used in debate about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict.
Formation methods
Pronunciation (phonetic modification)
Phonetic euphemism is used to replace profanities and blasphemies, diminishing their intensity. To alter the pronunciation or spelling of a taboo word (such as
profanity) to form a euphemism is known as
taboo deformation, or a
minced oath. Such modifications include:
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Shortening or "clipping" the term, such as Jeez ('Jesus') and what the— ('what the hell').
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Mispronunciations, such as oh my gosh ('oh my God'), frickin ('fucking'), darn ('damn') or oh shoot ('oh shit'). This is also referred to as a minced oath. Feck is a minced oath for 'fuck', originating in Hiberno-English and popularised outside of Ireland by the British sitcom Father Ted.
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Using as replacements, such as SOB ('son of a bitch'). Sometimes, the word word or bomb is added after it, such as F-word ('fuck'), etc. Also, the letter can be phonetically respelled.
Understatement
Euphemisms formed from
include
asleep for dead and
drinking for consuming alcohol. "Tired and emotional" is a notorious British euphemism for "drunk", one of many recurring jokes popularized by the satirical magazine
Private Eye; it has been used by MPs to avoid unparliamentary language.
Substitution
Pleasant, positive, worthy, neutral, or nondescript terms are often substituted for explicit or unpleasant ones, with many substituted terms deliberately coined by sociopolitical movements,
marketing,
public relations, or
advertising initiatives, including:
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meat packing company for 'slaughterhouse' (avoids entirely the subject of killing); natural issue or love child for 'bastard'; let go for 'fired/sacked', etc.
Some examples of Cockney rhyming slang may serve the same purpose: to call a person a berk sounds less offensive than to call a person a cunt, though berk is short for Berkeley Hunt,[although properly pronounced in upper-class British-English "barkley"] which rhymes with cunt.
Metaphor
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( beat the meat, choke the chicken, or jerkin' the gherkin for 'masturbation'; take a dump and take a leak for 'defecation' and 'urination', respectively)
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Comparisons ( buns for 'buttocks', weed for 'cannabis')
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Metonymy ( men's room for 'men's restroom/toilet')
Slang
The use of a term with a softer connotation, though it shares the same meaning. For instance,
screwed up is a euphemism for 'fucked up';
hook-up and
laid are euphemisms for 'sexual intercourse'.
Foreign words
Expressions or words from a foreign language may be imported for use as euphemism. For example, the French word enceinte was sometimes used instead of the English word
pregnant;
abattoir for
slaughterhouse, although in French the word retains its explicit violent meaning 'a place for beating down', conveniently lost on non-French speakers.
Entrepreneur for
businessman, adds glamour;
douche (French for 'shower') for vaginal irrigation device;
bidet ('little pony') for vessel for anal washing. Ironically, although in English physical "
Disability" are almost always described with euphemism, in French the English word
handicap is used as a euphemism for their problematic words infirmité or invalidité.
Periphrasis/circumlocution
Periphrasis, or
circumlocution, is one of the most common: to "speak around" a given word,
Implicature it without saying it. Over time, circumlocutions become recognized as established euphemisms for particular words or ideas.
Doublespeak
Bureaucracy frequently spawn euphemisms intentionally, as
doublespeak expressions. For example, in the past, the US military used the term "
sunshine units" for contamination by
Radionuclide.
The United States Central Intelligence Agency refers to systematic
torture as "enhanced interrogation techniques".
An effective death sentence in the Soviet Union during the
Great Purge often used the clause "imprisonment without right to correspondence": the person sentenced would be shot soon after conviction.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1974). 006092103X, Harper Perennial. 006092103X
As early as 1939, Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich used the term
Sonderbehandlung ("special treatment") to mean summary execution of persons viewed as "disciplinary problems" by the Nazis even before commencing the
the Holocaust.
Heinrich Himmler, aware that the word had come to be known to mean murder, replaced that euphemism with one in which Jews would be "guided" (to their deaths) through the slave-labor and extermination camps
after having been "evacuated" to their doom. Such was part of the formulation of
Final Solution (the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"), which became known to the outside world during the
Nuremberg Trials.
Lifespan
Frequently, over time, euphemisms themselves become taboo words, through the linguistic process of
semantic change known as
pejoration, which University of Oregon linguist Sharon Henderson Taylor dubbed the "
euphemism cycle" in 1974,
also frequently referred to as the "
euphemism treadmill", as worded by
Steven Pinker.
For instance, the place of human defecation is a needy candidate for a euphemism in all eras.
Toilet is an 18th-century euphemism, replacing the older euphemism
house-of-office, which in turn replaced the even older euphemisms
privy-house and
bog-house.
In the 20th century, where the old euphemisms
lavatory (a place where one washes) and
toilet (a place where one dresses
[French toile, fabric, a form of curtain behind which washing, dressing and hair-dressing were performed (Larousse, Dictionnaire de la langue française, "Lexis", Paris, 1979, p. 1891)]) had grown from widespread usage (e.g., in the United States) to being synonymous with the crude act they sought to deflect, they were sometimes replaced with
bathroom (a place where one bathes),
washroom (a place where one washes), or
restroom (a place where one rests) or even by the extreme form
powder room (a place where one applies facial cosmetics). The form
water closet, often shortened to
W.C., is a less deflective form. The word
shit appears to have originally been a euphemism for defecation in Pre-Germanic, as the Proto-Indo-European root *
, from which it was derived, meant 'to cut off'.
Another example in American English is the replacement of "colored people" with "Negro" (euphemism by foreign language), which itself came to be replaced by either "African American" or "Black".
Venereal disease, which associated shameful bacterial infection with a seemingly worthy ailment emanating from Venus, the goddess of love, soon lost its deflective force in the post-classical education era, as "VD", which was replaced by the three-letter initialism "STD" (sexually transmitted disease). "STD" has since been replaced by "STI" (sexually transmitted infection), in an effort to de-stigmatize testing for a-symptomatic patients before they show symptoms of disease.
Intellectually-disabled people were originally defined with words such as "morons" or "imbeciles", which then became commonly used insults. The medical diagnosis was changed to "mentally retarded", which morphed into the pejorative, "retard", against those with intellectual disabilities. To avoid the negative connotations of their diagnoses, students who need accommodations because of such conditions are often labeled as "special needs" instead, although the words "special" or "SPED" (short for "special education") have long been schoolyard insults.
See also
Further reading
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Originally published in:
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Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression. ISSN: 0363-3659. LCCN: 77649633. OCLC: 3188018.
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External links
