Euphemisms – words and phrases people use to avoid making a statement that is direct, clear and honest – are often used out of kindness when the direct expression might give needless offence. For example a deaf person is often described as hard of hearing and a part-blind person as partially-sighted. Unfortunately, in recent times these traditional and harmless euphemisms have been extended and replaced with such terms as aurally- or visually-challenged.
Have you ever admitted that you might have been, well, to put it bluntly – drunk? How often have you heard someone honestly admit they were drunk? No, they might admit to having been one over the eight, high spirited, squiffy, happy, a bit merry, worse for wear, tired and emotional or any one of several hundred other euphemisms for drunkenness, but drunk – never!
Any user of the English language has to become something of an expert in understanding the true meaning of euphemisms, so much are they a part of our everyday lives. We need these seemingly innocent terms as replacements for those that are embarrassing, unpleasant, crude or offensive. We begin in the nursery with coy substitutions for organs and functions (willy, winkle, thingy, botty, potty, tinkle, whoopsie, poo-poo, wee-wee, pee-pee) and, from there, naturally graduate to adult equivalents: John Thomas, old feller, down below, the ’loo (or worse, the bathroom), naughty bits, sleep with someone, nookie, jollies, hanky panky, rumpy-pumpy and so on.
Our euphemistic skills are honed by the media which, though much franker nowadays, still maintain some taboo areas: intimacy occurred (had sex); she was strangled and mutilated but had not been interfered with (killed but not raped); abused (today’s vague catch-all euphemism for any form of questionable physical, psychological or sexual activity). It is, as you can see, a very short journey from sex-change operation to gender reassignment.
The language of prudery also surprisingly invades that sanctum of directness, the doctor’s surgery. Physician-speak is a growth area. How’re the waterworks? The ticker/tummy? Your stool? The back passage? The little lump? All this prepares the way for negative patient care outcome to describe someone who dies in hospital.
The poor, in our euphemistic world, are in a lower income bracket, under-privileged or fiscal under-achievers. Slum homes are inner-city housing. When a city decides to clear away the slums the process is called urban renewal rather than slum clearance. And of course the same city calls its rat catchers rodent operatives.
Death has no dearth of euphemisms. Shakespeare might well ask today, ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ Senior Citizens and Golden Agers no longer simply die, they pass on, pass away, depart, sleep with the angels, go to their just reward, go to a better place, take a last bow, answer the final call, pop off, go on a final journey, fade away or, more jocularly, kick the bucket.
Euphemism is particularly effective for disguising crime – especially the crimes we might commit ourselves. Tax fiddling, meter feeding, fare dodging, joy riding and being economical with the truth all sound like commendable streetwise skills, whereas in fact they all amount to cheating and criminal activity.
Euphemism is also useful to help to make tedious-sounding jobs seem grand. Those people we used to know as insurance salesmen are now variously financial advisers, investment consultants, fiscal analysts, savings strategists, liquidity planners, pensions counsellors and endowments executives.
Again, the euphemistic traps are laid early in the career paths of young people. Consider these job descriptions and what, in real working life, they probably mean:
| Pleasant working manner essential | Must be subservient |
| All the advantages of a large company | Nobody knows anyone else’s name |
| Perfect opportunity for school leavers | Pathetically low pay |
| Salary negotiable | But only downwards |
| Earn money at home | Be exploited under your own roof |
| Earn £££££s! | But only through commission |
| Must have a sense of humour | Must not be a complainer |
Euphemism and Political Correctness
The fertile breeding ground for euphemism today undoubtedly lies in the quest for what is popularly known as political correctness, or PC. The self-appointed guardians of political correctness quite commendably seek to banish stigmatising and dehumanising terminology from our speech and writing. They have been successful in removing from our everyday language such thoughtless and hurtful terms as nigger, coon, cripple and OAP; and no thinking person would now use the term mongoloid to describe a child suffering from Down’s Syndrome. And they have been especially successful righting the centuries-old imbalance between the sexes in the popular perception: the use of man as a suffix or prefix (manhandle, mankind, man-made, manpower, man in the street; foreman, chairman, one-man show, alderman, salesman, etc); sexist generalisations (doctors are usually thought of as ‘he’, nurses as ‘she’; home helps are always female, etc); and making writers, editors and broadcasters aware of the problem with the dominant male pronoun.
While much of this is desirable rethinking, and even necessary, the PC police have unfortunately taken a few steps too far and are consequently ridiculed by many reasonable people. The campaign to expunge the E from VE Day (Victory over Europe Day), in order not to offend our near neighbours during the 50th anniversary of the end of World War Two celebrations, succeeded only in offending millions of British families who had lost loved ones in the conflict.
The international campaign for so-called non-sexist language has led to what many people regard as euphemistic excess. Consider these recommendations from a recently-published manual from The Women’s Press:
| a grandfather clock | should be called | a longcase clock |
| a granny knot | “ | an unstable reef knot |
| an old master painting | “ | a classic painting |
| the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street | “ | the Bank of England |
| a Johnny come lately | “ | an upstart |
| Tom, Dick and Harry | “ | any ordinary person |
Recommendations to end the masculine tyranny of chess are even more controversial – or preposterous. Knights are to be renamed defenders or horseriders; kings become sovereigns and queens are deputy sovereigns.
Such bizarre examples should be ample warning to every aspiring writer. Be sensible and sensitive towards people and institutions, whether minorities or majorities, but say what you mean!
A word to the wise about Clichés
All things considered, avoid clichés like the plague
We have all met people who have the extraordinary ability to talk in clichés:
Y’know, not to beat around the bush or hedge your bet, this chapter is a must-read because it calls a spade a spade and in a nutshell leaves no stone unturned to pull the rug from under those off-the-cuff, old-hat bête noires called clichés.
These are the people who’ve given the cliché its bad name. We all tend to use them, of course. Sometimes that familiar phrase is the neatest way of expressing yourself and most of us can, in a flash (cliché), unconsciously call up a few hundred of them to help us out in writing and conversation. But how aware are we of the irritation (or worse, sniggering) that the overuse of clichés can cause?
If you want to use clichés only when appropriate and, avoid them when not, it helps to be able to recognise them. Give yourself this quick test: how many of these tired and well-worn expressions can you complete with the missing word
COMPLETE