Euphemism

A euphemism (/ˈjuːfɪˌmɪzəm/) is an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that is deemed offensive or suggests something unpleasant.^[1] Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the user wishes to downplay. Euphemisms may be used to mask profanity or refer to topics some consider taboo such as disability, sex, excretion, or death in a polite way.^[2]

Sign in a Rite Aid drugstore using common euphemisms for (from top) contraceptives, douches, pads and tampons, and adult diapers, respectively

Etymology

Euphemism comes from the Greek 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'.^[3] Eupheme 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).^[4]

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, e.g. death, sex, excretory bodily functions. They may be created for innocent, well-intentioned purposes or nefariously and cynically, intentionally to deceive and confuse.

Mitigation

Euphemisms are also used to mitigate, soften or downplay the gravity of large-scale injustices, war crimes, 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".^[5]

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 ("beatings (of the heart)"), rather than נסיגה nesigá ("withdrawal"), to refer to the stages in the Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank (see Wye River Memorandum), in order to lessen the opposition of right-wing Israelis to such a move.^[6]: 181 The lexical item פעימות peimót, which literally means "beatings (of the heart)" is thus a euphemism for "withdrawal".^[6]: 181

Rhetoric

Euphemism may be used as a rhetorical strategy, in which case its goal is to change the valence of a description.^{[clarification needed]}

Controversial use

The act of labeling a term as a euphemism can in itself be controversial, as in the following two examples:

• 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.^[7]
• Enhanced interrogation is a euphemism for torture. For example, columnist David Brooks called the use of this term for practices at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and elsewhere an effort to "dull the moral sensibility".^[8]

Formation methods

Phonetic modification

Phonetic euphemism is used to replace profanities and blasphemies, diminishing their intensity. Modifications include:

• Shortening or "clipping" the term, such as Jeez (Jesus) and what the— ("what the hell").
• 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.
• Using acronyms 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.

Pronunciation

To alter the pronunciation or spelling of a taboo word (such as a swear word) to form a euphemism is known as taboo deformation, or a minced oath. Feck is a minced oath originating in Hiberno-English and popularised outside of Ireland by the British sitcom Father Ted. 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,^[9] which rhymes with cunt.^[10]

Understatement

Euphemisms formed from understatements include: asleep for dead and drinking for consuming alcohol. "Tired and emotional" is a notorious British euphemism for "drunk", one of many recurring jokes popularised 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:

• "meat packing company" for "slaughter-house" (avoids entirely the subject of killing); "natural issue" or "love child" for "bastard"; "let go" for "fired", etc.

Over time, it becomes socially unacceptable to use the latter word,^{[citation needed]} as one is effectively downgrading the matter concerned to its former lower status, and the euphemism becomes dominant, due to a wish not to offend; see euphemism treadmill.

Metaphor

• Metaphors (beat the meat, choke the chicken, or jerkin' the gherkin for masturbation; take a dump and take a leak for defecation and urination, respectively)
• Comparisons (buns for buttocks, weed for cannabis)
• Metonymy (men's room for "men's toilet")

Slang

See also: 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;^[11] abattoir for "slaughter-house", although in French the word retains its explicit violent meaning "a place for beating down", conveniently lost on non-French speakers. "Entrepreneur" for "business-man", adds glamour; "douche" (French: shower) for vaginal irrigation device; "bidet" (French: little pony) for "vessel for intimate ablutions". Ironically, although in English physical "handicaps" are almost always described with euphemism, in French the English word "handicap" is used as a euphemism for their problematic words "infirmité" or "invalidité".^{[citation needed]}

Periphrasis/circumlocution

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.

Doublespeak

Main article: Doublespeak

Bureaucracies frequently spawn euphemisms intentionally, as doublespeak expressions. For example, in the past, the US military used the term "sunshine units" for contamination by radioactive isotopes.^[12] Even today,^{[when?][citation needed]} the United States Central Intelligence Agency refers to systematic torture as "enhanced interrogation techniques".^[13] 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.^[14] 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 systematic extermination of the Jews. 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^[15] after having been "evacuated" to their doom. Such was part of the formulation of Endlösung der Judenfrage (the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question"), which became known to the outside world during the Nuremberg Trials.^[16]

Lifespan

 

Negro is an example of a once-innocuous euphemism that has become outdated and offensive.

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,^[17] also frequently referred to as the "euphemism treadmill". For instance, the act of human defecation is possibly the most 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.^[18] In the 20th century, where the old euphemisms lavatory (a place where one washes) or toilet (a place where one dresses^[19]) 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, which in turn became euphemised to W.C., is a less deflective form.^{[citation needed]}

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".^[20]

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); later, "STD" was replaced by "STI" (sexually transmitted infection).^[21] (This disease/infection is not the only one that is transmissible through sexual contact, so the terms STD and STI are also more general.)

The word shit appears to have originally been a euphemism for defecation in Pre-Germanic, as the Proto-Indo-European root *sḱeyd-, from which it was derived, meant 'to cut off'.^[22]

Mentally 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 a pejorative against those with mental 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 word "special" has begun to crop up as a schoolyard insult.^{[23][better source needed]} As of August 2013, the Social Security Administration replaced the term "mental retardation" with "intellectual disability".^[24] Since 2012, that change in terminology has been adopted by the National Institutes of Health and the medical industry at large.^[25] There are numerous disability-related euphemisms that have negative connotations.

See also

• Call a spade a spade
• Code word (figure of speech)
• Dead Parrot sketch
• Distinction without a difference
• Dog whistle (politics)
• Double entendre
• Dysphemism
• Emotive conjugation
• Expurgation (often called bowdlerization, after Thomas Bowdler)
• Framing (social sciences)
• Minced oath
• Minimisation
• Persuasive definition
• Polite fiction
• Political correctness
• Political euphemism
• Puns
• Sexual slang
• Spin (propaganda)
• Statistext
• Word play
• Word taboo

References

1. "Euphemism". Webster's Online Dictionary. Archived from the original on 2007-07-28. Retrieved 2014-03-16.
2. "euphemism (n.)". Etymonline.com. from the original on 7 January 2014. Retrieved 7 January 2014.
3. φήμη 2021-06-14 at the Wayback Machine, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
4. "Euphemism" Etymology". Online Etymology Dictionary. from the original on 20 March 2015. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
5. Timothy Ryback (November 15, 1993). "Evidence of Evil". Newyorker.com – The New Yorker. from the original on June 18, 2018. Retrieved December 1, 2015.
6. Zuckermann, Ghil'ad (2003), Language Contact and Lexical Enrichment in Israeli Hebrew. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1403917232, 978-1403938695 [1] 2019-06-13 at the Wayback Machine
7. affirmative action as euphemism
   • "Style Guide". The Economist. March 10, 2013. from the original on 2014-02-03. Retrieved 2013-03-10. Uglier even than human-rights abuses and more obscure even than comfort station, affirmative action is a euphemism with little to be said for it.
   • Custred, Glynn & Campbell, Tom (2001-05-22). "Affirmative Action: A Euphemism for Racial Profiling by Government". Investors Business Daily. Retrieved 2013-03-10.
   • Bayan, Rick (December 2009). "Affirmative Action". The New Moderate. from the original on 2013-03-06. Retrieved 2013-03-10.
   • George F. Will (April 25, 2014). "The Supreme Court tangles over euphemisms for affirmative action". The Washington Post. from the original on May 26, 2015. Retrieved May 26, 2015.
   • M. Ali Raza; A. Janell Anderson; Harry Glynn Custred (1999). The Ups and Downs of Affirmative Action Preferences. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-275-96713-0. from the original on 2016-04-25. Retrieved 2015-10-27. Chapter 4: Affirmative Action Diversity: A Euphemism for Preferences, Quotas, and Set-asides
   • A Journalist's Guide to Live Direct and Unbiased News Translation. Writescope Publishers. 2010. p. 195. ISBN 978-0-9577511-8-7. from the original on 2016-05-03. Retrieved 2015-10-27. In modern times, various social and political movements have introduced euphemisms, from affirmative action to political correctness to international conflicts, which are linguistically and culturally driven.
8. Enhanced interrogation as euphemism
   • David Brooks (December 12, 2014). "Shields and Brooks on the CIA interrogation report, spending bill sticking point". PBS Newshour. from the original on 2017-09-16. Retrieved 2014-12-14. [T]he report ... cuts through the ocean of euphemism, the EITs, enhanced interrogation techniques, and all that. It gets to straight language. Torture – it's obviously torture. ... the metaphor and the euphemism is designed to dull the moral sensibility.
   • "Transcript of interview with CIA director Panetta". NBC News. 2011-05-03. from the original on 2022-04-15. Retrieved 2011-08-21. Enhanced interrogation has always been a kind of handy euphemism (for torture)
   • Pickering, Thomas (April 2013). "America Must Atone for the Torture It Inflicted". The Washington Post. from the original on 2013-04-19. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
9. although properly pronounced in upper-class British-English "barkley"
10. . Collins Dictionary. Archived from the original on 2014-07-27. Retrieved 22 July 2014.
11. "Definition of ENCEINTE". www.merriam-webster.com. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. from the original on 2017-06-13. Retrieved 2017-05-20.
12. McCool, W.C. (1957-02-06). (PDF) (Report). United States Atomic Energy Commission. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-25. Retrieved 2007-11-07.
13. McCoy, Alfred W. (2006). A question of torture : CIA interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror. Internet Archive. New York : Metropolitan/Owl Book/Henry Holt and Co. ISBN 978-0-8050-8248-7.
14. Solzhenitsyn, Alexander (1974). The Gulag Archipelago I. New York: Harper Perennial. p. 6. ISBN 0-06-092103-X
15. . www.holocaust-history.org. Archived from the original on 28 May 2013. Retrieved 20 May 2017.
16. "Wannsee Conference and the "Final Solution"". from the original on 2018-07-10. Retrieved 2015-06-05.
17. Henderson Taylor, Sharon (1974). "Terms for Low Intelligence". American Speech. 49 (3/4): 197–207. doi:10.2307/3087798. JSTOR 3087798.
18. Bell, Vicars Walker (1953). On Learning the English Tongue. Faber & Faber. p. 19. The Honest Jakes or Privy has graduated via Offices to the final horror of Toilet.
19. Frence 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)
20. Demby, Gene (7 November 2014). ""Why We Have So Many Terms for 'People of Color'"". NPR. from the original on 12 December 2019. Retrieved 12 December 2019.
21. "STI vs. STD: Overcoming the Stigma | Power to Decide". powertodecide.org. from the original on 2022-02-25. Retrieved 2022-02-25.
22. Ringe, Don (2006). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-955229-0.
23. Hodges, Rick (2020-07-01). "The Rise and Fall of 'Mentally Retarded'". Medium. from the original on 2020-12-07. Retrieved 2021-02-13.
24. "Change in Terminology: "Mental Retardation" to "Intellectual Disability"". Federal Register. 2013-08-01. from the original on 2021-03-08. Retrieved 2021-03-10.
25. Nash, Chris; Hawkins, Ann; Kawchuk, Janet; Shea, Sarah E (2012-02-17). "What's in a name? Attitudes surrounding the use of the term 'mental retardation'". Paediatrics & Child Health. 17 (2): 71–74. doi:10.1093/pch/17.2.71. ISSN 1205-7088. PMC 3299349. PMID 23372396.

Further reading

• Keith, Allan; Burridge, Kate. Euphemism & Dysphemism: Language Used as Shield and Weapon, Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-7351-0288-0.
• 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].
• "Euphemism" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 9 (11th ed.). 1911.
• Enright, D. J. (1986). Fair of Speech. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-283060-0.
• Fussell, Paul: Class: A Guide Through The American Status System, Touchstone – Simon & Schuster Inc., 1983. ISBN 0-671-44991-5, 0-671-79225-3.
• R.W.Holder: How Not to Say What You Mean: A Dictionary of Euphemisms, Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-19-860762-8.
• Keyes, Ralph (2010). Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-05656-4.
• Maledicta: The International Journal of Verbal Aggression (ISSN US).
• McGlone, M. S., Beck, G., & Pfiester, R. A. (2006). "Contamination and camouflage in euphemisms". Communication Monographs, 73, 261–282.
• Rawson, Hugh (1995). A Dictionary of Euphemism & Other Doublespeak (second ed.). ISBN 0-517-70201-0.
• Smyth, Herbert Weir (1920). Greek Grammar. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 678. ISBN 0-674-36250-0.
• Heidepeter, Philipp; Reutner, Ursula. "When Humour Questions Taboo: A Typology of Twisted Euphemism Use", in: Pragmatics & Cognition 28/1, 138–166. ISSN 0929-0907.

External links

•   The dictionary definition of euphemism at Wiktionary