Euphemisms put a happy face on the world\u2019s brutishness.<\/p>\n
When a player is laid out by a ferocious hit in a football game, announcers downplay it with a cheerful \u201cHe really got his bell rung.\u201d<\/p>\n
We had a Department of War from the eighteenth century until the late 1940s. Then it was renamed the Department of Defense, which sounds a little less macho. I didn\u2019t realize until recently that \u201cno-fly zone\u201d is a euphemism. The phrase seems innocuous, almost serene. But then I heard the secretary of defense explain that \u201ca no-fly zone begins with an attack \u2026 to destroy the air defenses.\u201d<\/p>\n
You see houses for sale that have \u201c2\u00bd baths.\u201d As I understand it, \u201chalf bath\u201d means toilet and sink\u2014and no bath at all. \u201cBath\u201d is short for \u201cbathroom,\u201d which is itself a euphemism, in that it only tells the nicer part of the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeferred maintenance\u201d is a fancy phrase for neglect. \u201cNon-safety maintenance has, for lack of a better word, been deferred,\u201d said an official, explaining why the city hadn\u2019t found a way to clean its trains or repair its stations\u2019 escalators\u2014I don\u2019t even want to think about the lavatories.<\/p>\n
(Lavatory<\/em> comes from lavare<\/em>, Latin for \u201cto wash.\u201d Even toilet<\/em> formerly meant \u201cdressing room.\u201d Every word we have for this spot started as a euphemism.)<\/p>\n Where would politics be without euphemisms? They can be the difference between upsetting your supporters and lulling them to sleep. When Ronald Reagan was president he raised taxes several times. Since doing so was anathema to his party, Reagan came up with \u201crevenue enhancements.\u201d Similarly, when President Barack Obama risked dismaying his base with tax cuts, he called them \u201cspending reductions in the tax code.\u201d<\/p>\n Wall Street and its twisted financial wizards like to hide their skullduggery behind language like collateralized debt obligations<\/em>, which Time<\/em> magazine\u2019s Joe Klein paraphrased as \u201crepackaged crappy loans.\u201d Andrew Ross Sorkin\u2019s Too Big to Fail<\/em>, about the 2008 financial crisis, disclosed that corporate honchos balked at saying \u201cbailout,\u201d preferring \u201cvery large purchase assistance package.\u201d<\/p>\n As Americans struggle with their weight, they grow increasingly defensive about it. So a new term has picked up steam. Now, instead of admitting that little Billy is fat, we can sidestep hurt feelings and even sound kind of smart when we speak of Billy\u2019s high BMI (body mass index).<\/p>\n This country\u2019s diet is almost too revolting for words. A prepackaged sandwich in a convenience store came in two varieties: beef and \u201cfun meat.\u201d Fun meat?! I have a hunch that the ingredients in a fun-meat sandwich aren\u2019t anyone\u2019s idea of fun.<\/p>\n \u2014Tom Stern<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Euphemisms put a happy face on the world\u2019s brutishness. When a player is laid out by a ferocious hit in a football game, announcers downplay it with a cheerful \u201cHe really got his bell rung.\u201d We had a Department of War from the eighteenth century until the late 1940s. Then it was renamed the Department […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,53,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-definitions","category-idioms","category-vocabulary"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}