EUPHEMISMS

It’s a Whole New Language
Euphemistic language turns up in many areas of American life in a variety of situations. Not all euphemisms are alike, but they have one thing in common: They obscure meaning rather than enhance it; they shade the truth. But they exist for various reasons.

Sometimes they simply replace a word that makes people uncomfortable. For instance, the terms white meat, dark meat and drumstick came into use because in Victorian times people didn’t like to mention certain body parts. No one at the dinner table really wanted to hear Uncle Herbert say, “Never mind the thighs, Margaret, let me have one of those nice, juicy breasts. “It would’ve made them uncomfortable.
And at the same time, for the same reason, belly became stomach. But even stomach sounded too intimate, so they began saying tummy. It’s actually a bit sad.

I first became aware of euphemisms when I was nine years old. I was in the living room with my mother and my aunt Lil when I mentioned that Lil had a mole on her face. My mother was quick to point out that Lil didn’t have a mole, she had a beauty mark.

That confused me because, looking at Lil, the beauty mark didn’t seem to be working. And it confused me further, because my uncle John also had a brown thing on his face, and it was clearly not a beauty mark. And so on that day, I discovered that on some people what appeared to be moles were actually beauty marks. And as it turned out, they were the same people whose laugh lines looked a lot like crow’s-feet.

By the way, that whole beauty-mark scam worked so well that some women routinely began using eyebrow pencils to apply fake beauty marksa “fake mole’ being something no self-respecting woman would ever think of giving herself. Somehow, I can’t imagine Elizabeth Taylor turning to Joan Crawford and saying, “Lend me your eyebrow pencil, Joanie, I’m gonna put a fake mole on my face.”

By the way, it was only a few years after the Aunt Lil incident that I took comfort in the fact that some people apparently thought my ugly pimples were nothing more than minor skin blemishes.

Another role euphemisms play is to simply put a better face on things, to dress up existing phrases that sound too negative. Nonprofit became not-for-profit, because nonprofit sounded too much as though someone didn’t know what they were doing. Not-for-profit makes it clear that there was never any intention of making a profit in the first place.

But some words that are euphemized aren’t even vaguely negative, they re merely considered too ordinary. For that reason, many things that used to be free are now complimentary. Asking the hotel clerk if the newspapers are free makes you sound like a mooch, but “Are the newspapers complimentary?’ allows you to retain some small bit of dignity. This is the reason some hotels offer their guests complimentary continental breakfasts, while others give their customers free doughnuts.

If you’re one who would enjoy a closer look at euphemisms, you 11 find a number of sections in the book that will interest you. I broke the euphemisms into segments, because they play such a large and varied role in American speech. And I call it The New Language, because it’s certainly new to me; I know I didn’t grow up with it. And that’s my larger point: that it’s gotten worse over time. There were probably a few early signs I noticed, but 1 knew the problem was getting serious when I began to hear ordinary people refer to ideas as concepts. More to come.