Euphemism
From RationalWiki
A euphemism is a word or phrase used as a way of saying something without actually saying it directly. Some euphemisms are metaphors, while others are only substituting one word for another. Although euphemisms are common in many languages, they are especially frequent in English.
Euphemisms may be used to avoid offence, to put a certain 'spin' on a situation, or to avoid referring directly to something which is considered taboo, such as sex, death or bodily functions. Sometimes they are used to conceal the true meaning of a conversation when discussing something in public. This explains the origin of many of the slang words for illegal drugs.
There are probably more sexual euphemisms than any other kind. Some of them, such as "making love" are used to refer to sexual subjects politely and without causing offence, while many others are cruder and exist largely for amusement, such as "spanking the monkey" and many, many other euphemisms for masturbation.
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[edit] Euphemisms and spin
Euphemisms are used extensively in politics, media and public relations, often to whitewash or downplay negative subjects. An example is using words like "casualties" or "fatalities" to refer to deaths in a war or disaster. These words arguably dehumanise the subject of death to some extent, and are often used in the context of reducing people's lives to a statistic. Military jargon has developed many such phrases, such as "collateral damage" to refer to unintended civilian deaths in a conflict. An early example of this is the phrase "concentration camp", which was coined by the British in circa 1900, since it was thought to be more neutral-sounding than "prison camp", although it later assumed the same negative connotations after its use in World War II and after.
[edit] Euphemisms and political correctness
Many politically correct terms are euphemisms, created to avoid offence by being indirect about a sensitive issue, such as a person's race or disabilities, or to replace a more offensive phrase. This is the focus of many of the critics of political correctness, who claim that it is disingenuous and intended only to cloud language with pointless subtleties. In most cases, however, the new terms are coined because previous words or phrases have become unacceptable, via the process known as the "euphemism treadmill"
[edit] Euphemism treadmill
It quickly becomes apparent what a euphemism means and why it is being used. Hence it rapidly takes on all the connotations of the original word or phrase it was used to replace. Consequently new euphemisms are created as a substitute, and they in turn take on the original connotations and are gradually replaced with newer euphemisms. This phenomenon is known as the "euphemism treadmill".
Example of the euphemism treadmill include the many words used to describe people with mental disabilities. "Idiot", "imbecile", "moron" and "cretin" were all used historically for people with various kinds of mental impairment, but also used more widely as general pejoratives. Hence they were replaced in a medical context during the twentieth century with phrases such as "mentally retarded" and "spastic". Again these came to be used out of context as offensive insults, to the point where they were considered decidedly unpolitically correct, and were replaced by newer phrases such as "mentally challenged" and "special needs", some of which have also come to be used offensively. Meanwhile, the original terms such as "idiot" and "moron" have entirely lost their clinical connotations, and are used freely to describe people whose behaviour or opinions we find to be "stupid" without actually implying that they are disabled.
