5.3: Over-Using Euphemisms

When you replace a harsh-sounding phrase with one that means more or less the same but is gentler, you are using a euphemism. Taking a brick from King Tilt's tomb during a visit to the Egyptian pyramids is really stealing, but the person who does so is likely to cover it up with the euphemism "souvenir hunting." If the mortician mentions your "dearly departed" grandmother, that's a euphemism for your dead grandmother. The term dead is a more accurate though harsher one. If you're the type of person who tells it like it is, you will have a hard time being a successful mortician or politician.

The connotations of a term are what it suggests to the reader or hearer. Euphemisms have fewer negative connotations; they have fewer associations that are unpleasant to think about or that might offend the hearer's morality or sensitivities. Euphemisms include genteelisms such as "disrobed" for naked and "bosom" for "breasts. " A "Rocky Mountain oyster" is not an oyster at all, is it? The Bowlers' Association has resolved to use euphemisms to make bowling a more upscale sport. They plan to get bowling out of the bowling "alleys" and into the bowling "centers." They also plan to get the balls out of the "gutters" and into the "channels."

Exercise \(\PageIndex{1}\)

What is a euphemism for "armpit sweat-stopper"?

Answer

Underarm antiperspirant

Using a euphemism in place of a negatively charged term can keep a discussion going past sensitive points that might otherwise end the discussion or escalate hostilities. However, euphemisms have their down side. They can be used for very serious deception. In the 1930s and 1940s, the German bureaucratic memos called their Nazi mass murder of the Jews by the euphemism "the final solution to the Jewish problem."

Exercise \(\PageIndex{2}\)

Which terms are euphemisms for "American"?

1. Yankee
2. Capitalist pig
3. Imperialist
4. all of the above
5. none of the above

Answer

Answer (e). Answers (b) and (c) are more negative than "American." Answer (a) is not more negative than "American" in some regions of the world; New Englanders have no problem with being called "Yankee" as long as they aren't called "Yankee dogs." But even in New England "Yankee" isn’t a euphemism, just a synonym.

Sometimes we pay insufficient attention to the connotations of what we say. Suppose you were asked one of the following questions.

1. Is the government spending too much for welfare?
2. Is the government spending too much for assistance to the poor?

In a public opinion poll, it was found that twice as many Americans said "yes" to question 1 than to question 2. Can you see how connotations accounted for the difference? Pollsters, poets, and advertisers are the three groups in our society who need to be the most sensitive to connotations.

Two words that are synonymous according to a dictionary or a thesaurus can often have radically different connotations. Some public relations people make their fortunes by trading on their appreciation of these subtleties. Others achieve success by finding synonyms that disguise what is meant. The U.S. Department of Defense purchasers have paid a lot more money for a hammer when it was called a "manually powered fastener-driving impact device." The phrase isn't a euphemism for hammer, but it does serve to obscure what is really meant. Such cover-up phrases are called doubletalk. One D.O.D. purchase order called a steel nut a "hexiform rotatable surface compression unit."

Can you imagine a military officer walking into the local hardware store and whispering a request for a hexiform rotatable surface compression unit? During the 1991 U.S. war in Kuwait and Iraq, the Navy reported a 90 percent success rate for its Tomahawk missiles. By "success rate" the Navy meant the rate of successfully leaving the launch pad when the fire button was pressed. An even worse cover-up term was "collateral damage," which was what the military called damage to non-military citizens and their homes and vehicles.