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The Grumpy Grammarian

EUPHEMISM is "the act or an example of substituting a mild, indirect, or vague term for one considered harsh, blunt, or offensive" (American Heritage Dictionary).  The practice has its uses; for example, we have for a long time softened the harshness of death by referring to someone who died as having "passed on" or "passed away."  However, nowadays euphemism has become the language of political correctness (PC).  It is the language of deception, pretension, evasion, and obfuscation.

Euphemism is not so much the language of fools as the language of those who wish to treat the rest of us as fools, to assume that we are too stupid to see the real meaning of what is being said if it is couched in less offensive, indirect, or vague words.  It is a kind of linguistic dishonesty.

What is the thinking behind calling a used car a "previously owned" car except to represent something that has become stigmatized as junk as something else, hoping that we'll be fooled by the less forthright label?  The "previously owned" car is just as likely to break down a block from the dealer's lot as is a used car, but the seller wants to at least suggest that it won't – and expects us to be dumb enough to be deceived by the label.

Advertising and marketing thrive on euphemism.  It isn't that the advertisers actually mislabel what they promote (they are wary of lawsuits) but that they try to disguise the truth beneath half-truths, exaggeration of truth, or euphemism – again with the hope that we're too dense to notice.  Nobody sells "cheap" goods, only "inexpensive" goods, which is perhaps excusable since cheap also has the meaning of "inferior, of poor quality."  Nevertheless, when the seller knows that the "inexpensive" goods are indeed inferior and of poor quality, the label "inexpensive" is an obvious attempt to hoodwink the buyer.

Nowhere in corporate life is euphemism more prevalent than in the unpleasant reality of firing workers.  Nobody in personnel (oops – human relations or HR) is going to tell an employee that he has been fired.  No, sir!  You are being laid off or, better yet, downsized.  (Why do I think of being downsized as somehow being shrunk from my normal height and weight to something smaller?)

One of the many areas in which euphemism has become rampant as a form of deception and obfuscation is education.  Johnny and Jane are not failures but "underachievers"; they don't disrespect teachers but are "challenged by authority figures."  Euphemistic language permits the child to escape all personal responsibility for his or her actions, often by suggesting that blame lies with someone or something else – or with something beyond the child's control.  Junior doesn't fail to get along with other kids; he's "socially challenged."

In fact, the "challenged" concept has gone to ridiculous extremes.  Let's not call Jane a poor student but say instead that she is "academically challenged."  Johnny is not a poor athlete; he is "athletically challenged."  Someone I know makes fun of this trend.  He's about five feet tall, so he refers to himself as "vertically challenged."

Euphemisms also abound in job titles, sometimes in an effort to neutralize the job from gender associations, sometimes to sugarcoat what the work is, and sometimes simply to make the job sound important.  Thus, hardly anybody works as a "secretary" anymore (association with a lower-level position usually held by a woman); they are all "administrative assistants."  Garbage collectors are "sanitation engineers," though few of them have any knowledge of engineering.  A barber who wants to charge more for a haircut becomes "a hair stylist" (which may, I suppose, offend those who do a bit more than cut hair).  Few store clerks are simply clerks; they are "sales associates," "retail representatives," or something like that.  As soon as a job starts to sound somehow demeaning or gets a negative connotation, it acquires a new title (the janitor becomes the custodian).  The job doesn't change, just what it's called.

Politics and matters related to politics, however, are the areas in which euphemism has become so common that we almost never hear "straight talk."  We do not have wars anymore; we have "military actions."  It doesn't matter that the amount of death and destruction are the same in a war as in a "military action"; the latter sounds somehow less extreme.  Old-timers may recall that the conflict in Korea was called the Korean War only after the fact; while we were involved, politicians called it a "police action."  Euphemistic sugarcoating also occurs in domestic politics.  "Tax" is a dirty three-letter word, so we sometimes hear it called a "surcharge."  Nobody is fooled.  Furthermore, it's astounding how adept politicians are at converting a bribe to a "campaign contribution" – though this is more a matter of outright chicanery than mere euphemism.

My complaint about euphemisms is that they are, as I said at the outset, quite often used to deceive, evade, or confuse – to distort or conceal the truth.  In the climate of political correctness, we aren't supposed to call a spade a "spade" but to give it some other name because somebody (anyone, anywhere) is likely to be offended if we use the precise, accurate term:  I am not old; I am a senior citizen.  Sometimes, to be sure, such usage is a pleasant courtesy, but too often it represents an unwillingness to face hard facts.

The power of language is such that we believe that giving something a different label will change the nature of the thing.  However, to paraphrase Shakespeare, manure by any other name still stinks.

Please post on our Message Board any euphemisms that you consider to be especially irksome.  We know that there must be a ton of "Bush-isms" that qualify, but we couldn't think of them.