Euphemism

A yellow sign with a pointed bottom. At the top is the number 5 in an oval with a blue background. Below it are the words "family planning", "feminine hygiene", "feminine protection" and "sanitary protection"
Sign in a Rite Aid drugstore using common American euphemisms for (from top) contraceptives, douches, tampons, and menstrual pads, respectively

A euphemism /ˈjuːfəmɪzəm/ is a generally innocuous word or expression used in place of one that may be found offensive or suggest 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 refer to taboo topics (such as disability, sex, excretion, or death) in a polite way, or to mask profanity.[2]

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

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. Euphemisms are also used to 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 (at least given the scale) is "directives for the extermination process obscured in bureaucratic euphemisms".[5]

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

Formation

Phonetic modification

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

  • Shortening or "clipping" the term, such as Jeez (Jesus) and what the— ("what the hell")
  • Mispronunciations, such as frak, frig (both the preceding for "fuck"), what the fudge, what the truck (both "what the fuck"), oh my gosh ("oh my God"), frickin ("fucking"), darn ("damn"), oh shoot ("oh shit"), be-yotch ("bitch"), etc. This is also referred to as a minced oath.
  • Using first letters as replacements, such as SOB ("son of a bitch"), what the eff ("what the fuck"), S my D ("suck my dick"), BS ("bullshit"). Sometimes, the word "word" is added after it, such as F-word ("fuck"), S-word ("shit"), B-word ("bitch"), etc. Also, the letter can be phonetically respelled. For example, the word piss was shortened to pee (pronounced as the letter P) in this way.

Figures of speech

  • Ambiguous statements (it for excrement, the situation or a girl in trouble for pregnancy, passing away or passed or go for death, do it or come together in reference to a sexual act, tired and emotional for drunkenness)
  • Understatements (asleep for dead, drinking for consuming alcohol, hurt for injured, etc.)
  • Metaphors (beat the meat or 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")

Rhetoric

Euphemism may be used as a rhetorical strategy, in which case its goal is to change the valence of a description from positive to negative.

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.

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 or a blind person. However, visual impairment can be a broader term, including, for example, people who have partial sight in one eye, those with uncorrectable mild to moderate poor vision, or even those who wear glasses, groups that would be excluded by the word blind.

Words from a foreign language

Expressions or words from a foreign language may be imported for use as a replacement for an offensive word. For example, the French word enceinte was sometimes used instead of the English word pregnant.[8] This practice of word substitution became so frequent that the expression "pardon my French " was adopted in attempts to excuse the use of profanity. Many examples exist where a hindi word used in english language for the same purpose.

Evolution

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, or a minced oath. In American English, words that are unacceptable on television, such as fuck, may be represented by deformations such as freak, even in children's cartoons.[9] Some examples of 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, which rhymes with cunt.[10]

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.[11] An effective death sentence in the Soviet Union during the Great Purge often used the clause "imprisonment without right to correspondence": the person sentenced never had a chance to correspond with anyone because soon after imprisonment they would be shot.[12] As early as 1939, Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich used the term Sonderbehandlung ("special treatment") to mean summary execution (most likely by hanging) 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[13] 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 infamous to the entire world during the Nuremberg Trials.[14]

A euphemism may itself devolve into a taboo word, through the linguistic process known as semantic change (specifically pejoration) described by W. V. O. Quine,[15] and more recently dubbed the "euphemism treadmill" by Harvard professor Steven Pinker.[16] For instance, 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.[17] In the 20th century, where the words lavatory or toilet were deemed inappropriate (e.g. in the United States), they were sometimes replaced with bathroom or water closet, which in turn became restroom, W.C., or washroom.

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".[18]

Euphemisms are at risk of being understood and used literally by young children who are acquiring language, and by older people who are learning a foreign language; an example is the "pregnant fireman" type of children's solecism.[19]

Doublespeak is a term sometimes used for deliberate euphemistic misuse of words to distort or reverse their meaning, as in a "Ministry of Peace" which wages war, and a "Ministry of Love" which imprisons and tortures. It is a portmanteau of the terms Newspeak and doublethink, which originate from George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The word euphemism itself can be used as a euphemism. In the animated TV special Halloween Is 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 also 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?"

In Wes Anderson's film Fantastic Mr. Fox, the replacement of swear words by the word cuss became a humorous motif throughout the film.

In Tom Hanks's web series Electric City, the use of profanity has been censored by the word expletive. "[Expletive deleted]" entered public discourse after its notorious use in censoring transcripts of the Watergate tapes.

In Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, the curses of the scientist Ebling Mis have all been replaced with the word unprintable. In fact, there is only one case of his curses being referred to as such, leading some readers to mistakenly assume that the euphemism is Ebling's, rather than Asimov's. The same word has also been used in his short story "Flies".

George Carlin has stated in audio books and his stand-up shows that euphemisms soften everyday language and take the life out of it.[20]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Euphemism". Webster's Online Dictionary.
  2. ↑ "euphemism (n.)". Etymonline.com. Retrieved 7 January 2014.
  3. ↑ φήμη, Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, on Perseus
  4. ↑ "Euphemism" Etymology". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
  5. ↑ Timothy Ryback (November 15, 1993). "Evidence of Evil - The New Yorker". Newyorker.com. Retrieved December 1, 2015.
  6. ↑ affirmative action as euphemism
    • "Style Guide". The Economist. March 10, 2013. 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. Retrieved 2013-03-10.
    • George F. Will (April 25, 2014). "The Supreme Court tangles over euphemisms for affirmative action". The Washington Post. Retrieved May 26, 2015.
    • M. Ali Raza; A. Janell Anderson; Harry Glynn Custred (1 January 1999). The Ups and Downs of Affirmative Action Preferences. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-275-96713-0. 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. 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.
  7. ↑ Enhanced interrogation as euphemism
    • David Brooks (December 12, 2014). "Shields and Brooks on the CIA interrogation report, spending bill sticking point". PBS Newshour. 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". MSNBC. 2011-05-03. 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. Retrieved 2013-04-22.
  8. ↑ "Definition of ENCEINTE". www.merriam-webster.com. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Retrieved 2017-05-20.
  9. ↑ "Obscene, Indecent and Profane Broadcasts". FCC.gov. U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Archived from the original on 2013-12-09. Retrieved 2014-01-20.
  10. ↑ http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/berk Collins Dictionary, definition of "berk"/"burk", retrieved 22 July 2014.
  11. ↑ McCool, W.C. (1957-02-06). "Return of Rongelapese to their Home Island — Note by the Secretary" (PDF). United States Atomic Energy Commission. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-09-25. Retrieved 2007-11-07.
  12. ↑ Solzhenitsyn, Alexander (1974). The Gulag Archipelago I. New York, NY: Harper Perennial. p. 6. ISBN 0-06-092103-X
  13. ↑ "Holocaust-history.org". www.holocaust-history.org. Archived from the original on 28 May 2013. Retrieved 20 May 2017.
  14. ↑ "Wannsee Conference and the "Final Solution"".
  15. ↑ Quine, W.V. (1987). Quiddities. Belknap Press. pp. 53–54.
  16. ↑ "The game of the name" (PDF). Baltimore Sun. 1994-04-03. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-05-15. Retrieved 2011-01-19.
  17. ↑ 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.
  18. ↑ Ringe, Don (2006). From Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-955229-0.
  19. ↑ http://davesdailyquotes.com/the-pregnant-fireman/
  20. ↑ "George Carlin's stand up act: Euphemism". YouTube.

Further reading

  • A Keith; 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].
  • Wikisource "Euphemism". Encyclopædia Britannica. 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; ISBN 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.
  • The dictionary definition of euphemism at Wiktionary
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