Euphemism

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]

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 sometimes said to be 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]

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, 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]

Negro is an example of a once-innocuous euphemism that has become outdated and offensive.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

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] 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.

• 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.

• The dictionary definition of euphemism at Wiktionary