Euphemisms still leave bitter taste

By Martha Morgan

Nov. 13, 2008

Do you remember raspberry vinegar? It was a popular summer refreshment favoured by ladies when I was a child, but I never tasted it. I got lemonade instead.

I always had my suspicions that maybe it was a euphemism for something proper ladies would not admit to imbibing. Of course, I had no idea then what a euphemism was. Nowadays we live by them.

The dictionary describes them as “ the substitution of a mild, indirect or vague expression for one thought to be harsh, offensive, or blunt, often having to do with bodily functions, sex or death, for example: rest room for toilet, lady of the night for prostitute and passing away for dying.”

The thing about euphemisms is that everybody knows what they stand for. We knew that unmentionables were underwear, that when a married woman was in a delicate condition it meant she was going to have a baby, but if she wasn’t married she was in a family way.

We have progressed considerably since then.

Underwear is now intimate apparel. Garbage men are sanitary engineers and the town dump has become a waste management site. In 1978 rapeseed became canola. The military establishment is particularly gifted when it comes to euphemisms. First World War shell shock became battle fatigue by the Second World War. Evidently this was still too blunt, so during the Korean War it was called operational exhaustion, followed, after Viet Nam, by post-traumatic stress.

This trend continues in our own troubled times. Friendly fire sounds, somehow, less deadly than killed by mistake, and the horrific aspects of bombed homes and fleeing refugees can be lightened by referring to civilian casualties as collateral damage.

But someone who has been downsized is just as unemployed as someone who had been fired, so what’s the point in all this? Are we any more fooled by the new euphemisms than I was by raspberry vinegar?

You can reach Martha at mac.mor@shaw.ca