Euphemism

A euphemism is "the substitution of a potentially offensive or unpleasant word or expression with one that is more pleasant or inoffensive." The word comes from Greek euphemia, words of good omen, from eû, good, and phḗmē, speech, and the ancient Greeks used the term itself euphemistically, for keeping a holy silence. The article sorts formation into familiar tracks: phonetic modification and the clipped or disguised minced oath (Jeez, gosh, the F-word), semantic substitution (let go for fired), borrowed foreign words (enceinte for pregnant, abattoir for slaughterhouse), periphrasis that speaks around the concept, understatement (asleep for dead) and metaphor (take a leak).

Euphemisms also wear out. The article's lifespan section describes the euphemism treadmill, also called the euphemism cycle (Sharon Henderson Taylor, 1974): each polite replacement attracts the stigma of what it names and is replaced in turn, restroom succeeding toilet, and terms for disease and for intelligence cycling the same way. The dark twin is doublespeak, the state and military kind the article documents from sunshine units for radioactive contamination to enhanced interrogation techniques for torture. For novelists euphemism is voice: what a narrator cannot say outright, and how the sentence bends to avoid it, characterizes the speaker as sharply as any metaphor would, and a dated euphemism places a character in time as reliably as costume.