Euphamism

2.3 Euphemism

Euphemism was from Greek. The first two letters “eu” means “good”, and the root “-pheme-” refers to ”saying”, “speech”. So euphemism refers to the words or phrases in place of things considered to be unpleasant or rude.

The original reasons for euphemizing may come from the fear of and the desire to the mysterious forces that rule the whole universe, like the saying “speak of the devil and he appears”.

Our fear of specific diseases has led us to coin a lexicon of euphemisms. For example, when we say “he has a long (terminal) illness” or “he has got the big c”, we mean “he got cancer”. Instead of saying somebody can not hear well, we would say he is “hard of hearing”. We use “social disease” to refer to “AIDS”, the “lung trouble” to “tuberculosis”, the “old man’s friend” to “pneumonia” and when we say someone is “a little confused”, we actually mean “he is mad”.

Another motive of our contemporary euphemizing is our strong desire to avoid offending others. For example, when two students fought with each other in class, their teacher would not describe the situation with the word “fight”, he may use the sentence like this:

This student is too free with fists.

Or: This student resorts to physical means of winning his point or to attract attention.

In school, students’ other behaviors are also euphemized. For example:

A slow student is described as a student working at his own level, or a student who can do better work with help;

In order to describe A lazy student, we would use “underachiever”;

And for The student who cheats in the exams, we would say he “depends on others to do his/her work”.

To people with poor living standards, we would use these words “low-income, working class, modest”. If a person is a little fat, we would not say “fat”. We would say “he is over-weighted” or “stout”. And in English, the old is referred as “the senior, mature, or traditional”

Let's watch a video clip from a TV series “Friends”. Let’s see the euphemisms they used when talking about Phoebe’s first date.

Ok, now, Did you find those euphemisms? The first sentence, when the boyfriend said “we should do this again”, actually he means “we should never do this again”, “I will not be your boyfriend”. And the sentence “It’s not you” means “it is you”. “You are such a nice guy” means “we will never be the partners”. If a boy said “I think we should see other people” to you, a girl, that means “he has seen some other people”. If a child is told that the parents “put the dog to sleep”, actually it means the dog is dead. And the same is “it went off to live on some farm”.

Here is the exercise of euphemism. See whether you can find those euphemisms used in these sentences. Have a try!

My father is between jobs but has two interviews today.

The peace officer apprehended the sanitation- man for speeding.

Our son is a special child.

Dan's supervisor laid him off because he was unmotivated.

American football is a physical game, and has disabled many players.

The correctional facility has 220 inmates, five of whom are facing capital punishment.

Keys：

Is between jobs: lost his job‍

The peace officer: the traffic police

Apprehended : arrested

The sanitation man: the trash man

A special child: a child with low IQ

Unmotivated: lazy

A physical game: a game with violent physical attacks

The correctional facility: the prison

Inmates: prisoners

Facing capital punishment: sentenced to death

Practice