I was speaking with a friend the other day – I’ll call him Daniel even though that’s not the name on his birth certificate.  Anyway I was talking about something truly important and he love usual wasn’t listening.  That’s not entirely his fault though because he may have a touch of attention deficit disorder. Of course in his case the ADD is just a euphamism for “has so much going on in his own head that there’s no room to receive it information from other sources.”

So there I am blathering away when he suddenly blurts out. “I love euphamisms”. Which is interesting since I just mentioned euphamisms in the preceeding paragraph. Don’t you think that’s a weird coincidence?

While Daniel was went on to talk about other things he loves or something I stopped paying attention to him and started thinking that probably a entire lof of our everyday conversation is conducted with euphamisms. The English language is so infused with political correctness and obfuscation that we rarely just say exactly what we mean.

For instance we eat pork and beef not pig and cow. (And by “we” I mean savages;  not me). We don’t have television repeats anymore we have “encore presentations.” We don’t torture people we employ “enhanced interrogation techniques. (And again by “we” I mean savages;  not me).

And speaking of Afghanistan they keep telling us on the news that our soldiers in Afghanistan are “losing their lives”. Like it’s their fault – that they were somehow carelessness enough to “lose” their lives. I guess saying it that way absolves government of all responsibility for getting them killed.

Nobody gets fired anymore either. They get “laid-off” — which used to mean a temporary thing where the off-laid person had every expectation of getting back to job really soon. Not anymore.

Sometimes firing people is also called “decrecruitment” or “personnel surplus reduction” or “being “made redundant” or being “relieved of duties”.

The one I like least when they tell people they’re “being let go”. Like you’re doing them a favour. Like you’ve been holding them against their will and will now kindly release them into career freedom.

I don’t like that semester when you’re talking to someone on the phone either. The person on the other end suddenly says “Okay I’d better let you go.”  Did I beg to be let go? Did anything I said make you think I wanted to be let go? I’m in the middle of telling you some very important stuff about the mysterious weeping sores on my buttocks. If you have to go why don’t you just say “Okay I have to go now.” I can handle that. You’re not fooling me into thinking “Oh gee. That was nice of her to let me go.”

Euphamism is a Greek work from the root eupheme  meaning well-speaking. It’s the opposite of blaspheme which means evil-speaking.

Anyway euphemisms aren’t all annoying and stupid. They can be as Daniel implied  lots of fun too. Here are a few that are a bit unusual:

Death

 Self-Gratification

Sex

 Pooping

Getting Fired

Wasn’t that fun? Okay so here are a few more obsolete euphemisms you may not have heard before. Or perhaps you have except I haven’t so I presume no one has. Isn’t that terribly ego-centric of me? Actually I have heard one of them before.  But if you haven’t any or some of them before see if you can figure out what they mean without looking them up.

There isn’t a prize.

PS: I was just kidding about Daniel before. He’s actually a very good listener and a scintillating conversationalist.