Euphemism 委婉语(1)

A euphemism is a generally innocuous word or expression used in place of one that may be found offensive or suggest something unpleasant. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive, and often misleading terms for things the user wishes to dissimulate or downplay. Euphemisms are used for dissimulation, to refer to taboo topics (such as disability, sex, excretion, and death) in a polite way, and to mask profanity. The opposite of euphemism roughly equates to dysphemism.

Euphemisms may be used to avoid words considered rude, while conveying their meaning: "Kiss my you-know-what!" instead of the more vulgar, "Kiss my ass "; the expletive sugar to substitute shit. Some euphemisms are so commonly used as to be standard usage: "pass away" for "die". Over the centuries euphemisms have been introduced for "latrine", and themselves replaced as they came to be considered unacceptable; "toilet", once itself a euphemism, is often euphemized as "bathroom", "restroom", etc. Euphemisms are used to downplay and conceal unpalatable facts, as "collateral damage" for "civilian casualties" in a military context, and "redacted" for "censored".

ⅠEtymology and usage

Etymologically, the eupheme is the opposite of the blaspheme (evil-speaking). Primary examples of taboo words requiring the use of a euphemism are names for deities, such as Persephone, Hecate, or Nemesis. The term euphemism itself was used as a euphemism by the ancient Greeks, meaning "to keep a holy silence" (speaking well by not speaking at all).

Historical linguistics has revealed traces of taboo deformations in many languages. Several are known to have occurred in Indo-European languages, including the presumed original Proto-Indo-European words for bear (*rkso), wolf (*wlkwo), and deer (originally, hart—although the wordhart remained commonplace in parts of England until the 20th century as is witnessed by the widespread use of the pub sign The White Hart). In different Indo-European languages, each of these words has a difficult etymology because of taboo deformations: a euphemism was substituted for the original, which no longer occurs in the language. An example is the Slavic root for bear, *medu-ed-, which means "honey eater". Names in Germanic languages—including English—are derived from the color brown. Another example in English is donkey replacing the old Indo-European-derived word ass. The word dandelion (literally, tooth of lion, referring to the shape of the leaves) is another example, being a substitute for pissenlit, meaning "wet the bed", a possible reference to the fact that dandelion was used as a diuretic. The Talmud describes the blind as having "much light" (Aramaic סגי נהור) and this phrase—sagee nahor—is the Modern Hebrew for euphemism.

In some languages of the Pacific, using the name of a deceased chief is taboo. Among indigenous Australians, it is forbidden to use the name, image, or recording of the deceased; the Australian Broadcasting Corporation now publishes a warning to indigenous Australians when using names, images, or recordings of people who have died. Since people are often named after everyday things, this leads to the swift development of euphemisms; new names for things are required when an old one used as a personal name becomes taboo. These languages have a very high rate of vocabulary change.

In a similar manner, in imperial China, writers of classical Chinese texts were expected to avoid using characters contained within the name of the currently ruling emperor as a sign of respect. In these instances, the relevant characters were replaced by synonyms. (This practice may provide a fairly accurate means of dating a document.)

1.1 Formation

1.1.1 Phonetic modification

Phonetic euphemism is used to replace profanities, giving them the intensity of a mere interjection.

•      Shortening or "clipping" the term ("Jeez" for Jesus, "What the-" for "What the hell")

•      Using the first letter ("SOB", "What the eff", "BS"). Sometimes, the word "word" is added after it ("F word," "S word," "B word"). Also, the letter can be phonetically respelled, for example, the word "piss" was shortened to "pee" in this way.

•      Military-style first letter usage where NATO phonetic alphabet words are used in place of letters: "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" for WTF, "Bravo Sierra" for BS, "Whiskey Tango" for WT (White Trash), etc.

•      Mispronunciations, such as "Frak," "What the fudge," "What the truck," "Oh my gosh," "Frickin," "Darn," "Oh, shoot," "Be-yotch," etc.

•      Rhymes, such as "What the duck," "Oh, snap!" and "Cheese and Rice."

1.1.2 Figures of speech

•      Ambiguous statements (it for excrement, the situation or "a girl in trouble" for pregnancy, going to the other side for death, do it or come together in reference to a sexual act, tired and emotional for drunkenness)

•      Understatements ("sleep" for die, "hurt" for injured, etc.)

•      Metaphors, such as "beat the meat," "choke the chicken," "take a dump", "drain the main vein", etc.

•      Comparisons, like "wiener" for "penis", "buns" for "buttocks", "weed" for "cannabis".

•      Metonymy ("lose a person" for dying, "drinking" for consuming alcohol, "men's room" for men's toilet)

1.1.3 Slang

•      Using a personal name, such as "Dick" for penis

•      Using a less harsh term with similar meaning. For instance "screwed up" is a euphemism for "fucked up", "laid" for sexual intercourse

1.1.4 Others

•      Using an adjective to refer to an element of a person, rather than using a noun to define them, for example, "...makes her look slutty" instead of "...is a slut"

•      Reverse understatements or litotes, such as "not so big" for "short", "not exactly a supermodel" for "ugly", or "not true" for "a lie"

•      Using a positive context ("Inspired by" instead of "ripped off" or "plagiarized", "streamlining the workforce" for "laying off/firing (workers)").

•      Using the term "challenged". The most common example of this is using "mentally challenged" to describe mental retardation. There are many others, though, from "vertically challenged" for short people, to "vocally challenged" for those with mediocre singing voices.

•      Using the word "bleep" (an onomatopoeia for the broadcasting censored tone), a common word like "sofa", or even the word "profane" or "euphemism", to replace profanity.

There is some disagreement over whether certain terms are or are not euphemisms. For example, sometimes the phrase visually impaired is labeled as a politically correct euphemism for blind. However, visual impairment can be a broader term, including, for example, people who have partial sight in one eye, those with uncorrectable mild to moderate poor vision, or even those who wear glasses, a group that would be excluded by the word blind.

There are three antonyms of euphemism: dysphemism, cacophemism, and power word. The first can be either offensive or merely humorously deprecating with the second one generally used more often in the sense of something deliberately offensive. The last is used mainly in arguments to make a point seem more correct.