Post by Bill on Dec 4, 2006 19:11:51 GMT -5
home.bluemarble.net/~langmin/miniatures/euphemisms.htm
No. 162
Language has its Powers
There are some words we often avoid saying
When someone has passed away, the grief therapist receives the client and prepares that loved one, makes arrangements, and soon the dearly departed is interred. Or in a more jaunty mood you might say that someone bought the farm and is soon pushing up daisies. All this might sound a little circumspect or evasive, when we really mean that when someone has died, the funeral director receives the corpse and sees to it that the dead body is soon buried.
All of us routinely avoid speaking words that have to do with death, but in many other areas we also seem to be reluctant to say something that is too ‘strong’ -
rest room, powder room
differently-abled, mentally challenged
collateral damage, device
pre-owned
sanitation worker, sanitation engineer
B.S., freakin’
the C-word
gosh darned, jiminy
Without much effort you’ll quickly think of hundreds more expressions that show a caution avoiding ‘strong’ words. But what makes these words ‘strong’? That’s the question we’ll come back to at the end of this Miniature.
The language is full of this kind of pussy-footing, some of which you may not even recognize as such. We’re talking of course about euphemism, which we can define something like “a word or expression intended by the speaker to be less offensive or objectionable than what it replaces.”
Our purpose here is not to collect them, which would be fun but does not give us much further insight. We don’t need to anyway, because you can easily find several good dictionaries of euphemisms. Instead we want to think about a more interesting question: Why do we use euphemisms at all? To look at this, we’ll take only religious euphemisms, a good example of which is that last example above. What means do we have if we want to circumspectly use God, Jesus Christ, the devil, hell and damnation in some sort of mild oath? The following words and expressions are a mere sampling of the most widespread euphemisms. There are many more for these and related words.
GOD we usually say golly, gosh, ye gads; by God is often by gum, begorrah, my goodness, goodness gracious, good grief.
Some old ones that now merely sound quaint are egad, gadzooks (God’s Hooks, referring to the nails on the cross), odds bodkins (God’s Body), zounds (rhymes with wounds; God’s Wounds).
GOD-DAMNED in ‘polite society’ most of us will say gosh darned, gol-darned or a Spoonerized version like doggone, dadgum, dadburn, dadblast, dingbust.
JESUS Jeez, Jeepers, Jiminy, by Jesus: by George, by Jingo, bejabbers. Probably the most common religious euphemism is Gee! Is this the first letter of God, or the first syllable of Jesus? Because in some religious traditions Jesus is called God, it is plain that the latter word often means the former (certainly in the above Gadzooks and Odds Bodkins).
CHRIST cripes, criminy, Christmas, for cryin’ out loud.
JESUS CHRIST Jiminy Crickets, Judas Priest, Judas Christopher, Jeezy Creezy, Jason Crisp, probably also Gee whiz, Gee willikers
LORD this word and the next do not figure in nearly as many euphemisms: my land, lordy
MARY Mother Macree, Cripes Mariah.
HOLY GHOST holy smokes, holy Moses, holy moley
DAMNED darn(ed), durn, dang, dash, drat, darnation, tarnation. The first five often with it added: darn it etc.
HELL what the heck, what the Sam Hill
DEVIL what the deuce, what the dickens
SWEAR even this relatively mild word is occasionally avoided: I suwanee. Also the folksy expression I swan to John, probably I swear by Jesus.
A reader of this essay sent in the one-liner "Heck is where you go if you don't believe in Gosh, Jeepers Creepers or the Holy Moley."
Now, are there any of these you didn’t even realize were euphemisms?
Back to the question of why we use euphemisms. The main reason, already part of the definition above, is to sidestep possible social consequences. We simply don’t want to risk offending other people - or sugar-coat the reality - by saying something ‘crude’ such as toilet, crippled, retarded, civilian deaths or bombs. Some are what we now call ‘politically correct’, others simply sound more prestigious such as replacements of the older second-hand, garbage man, janitor.
Some cannot even be written here because they are ‘flag’ words that will trigger blocking of this whole Miniature. Some readers will never even see this essay because of the bold-face four-letter words above.
A deeper reason why words such as religious terms are avoided - particularly in mild oaths - is that some are felt have a power to invoke the attention of what is spoken: God and Jesus Christ possibly out of a fear of using them inappropriately or the risk of calling forth too-powerful religious forces, and hell, damnation, devil out of a fear of invoking the adversaries themselves. This is equally true of death, cancer and many others.
Even in our modern secular society, some words possess a unique but largely unacknowledged power to call forth both good and evil. In this we’re very little different from our most distant ancestors. People throughout recorded history have shown awe of the force of certain ‘magic’ words.
Back to Index
Copyright © 2006 by William Z. Shetter
No. 162
Language has its Powers
There are some words we often avoid saying
When someone has passed away, the grief therapist receives the client and prepares that loved one, makes arrangements, and soon the dearly departed is interred. Or in a more jaunty mood you might say that someone bought the farm and is soon pushing up daisies. All this might sound a little circumspect or evasive, when we really mean that when someone has died, the funeral director receives the corpse and sees to it that the dead body is soon buried.
All of us routinely avoid speaking words that have to do with death, but in many other areas we also seem to be reluctant to say something that is too ‘strong’ -
rest room, powder room
differently-abled, mentally challenged
collateral damage, device
pre-owned
sanitation worker, sanitation engineer
B.S., freakin’
the C-word
gosh darned, jiminy
Without much effort you’ll quickly think of hundreds more expressions that show a caution avoiding ‘strong’ words. But what makes these words ‘strong’? That’s the question we’ll come back to at the end of this Miniature.
The language is full of this kind of pussy-footing, some of which you may not even recognize as such. We’re talking of course about euphemism, which we can define something like “a word or expression intended by the speaker to be less offensive or objectionable than what it replaces.”
Our purpose here is not to collect them, which would be fun but does not give us much further insight. We don’t need to anyway, because you can easily find several good dictionaries of euphemisms. Instead we want to think about a more interesting question: Why do we use euphemisms at all? To look at this, we’ll take only religious euphemisms, a good example of which is that last example above. What means do we have if we want to circumspectly use God, Jesus Christ, the devil, hell and damnation in some sort of mild oath? The following words and expressions are a mere sampling of the most widespread euphemisms. There are many more for these and related words.
GOD we usually say golly, gosh, ye gads; by God is often by gum, begorrah, my goodness, goodness gracious, good grief.
Some old ones that now merely sound quaint are egad, gadzooks (God’s Hooks, referring to the nails on the cross), odds bodkins (God’s Body), zounds (rhymes with wounds; God’s Wounds).
GOD-DAMNED in ‘polite society’ most of us will say gosh darned, gol-darned or a Spoonerized version like doggone, dadgum, dadburn, dadblast, dingbust.
JESUS Jeez, Jeepers, Jiminy, by Jesus: by George, by Jingo, bejabbers. Probably the most common religious euphemism is Gee! Is this the first letter of God, or the first syllable of Jesus? Because in some religious traditions Jesus is called God, it is plain that the latter word often means the former (certainly in the above Gadzooks and Odds Bodkins).
CHRIST cripes, criminy, Christmas, for cryin’ out loud.
JESUS CHRIST Jiminy Crickets, Judas Priest, Judas Christopher, Jeezy Creezy, Jason Crisp, probably also Gee whiz, Gee willikers
LORD this word and the next do not figure in nearly as many euphemisms: my land, lordy
MARY Mother Macree, Cripes Mariah.
HOLY GHOST holy smokes, holy Moses, holy moley
DAMNED darn(ed), durn, dang, dash, drat, darnation, tarnation. The first five often with it added: darn it etc.
HELL what the heck, what the Sam Hill
DEVIL what the deuce, what the dickens
SWEAR even this relatively mild word is occasionally avoided: I suwanee. Also the folksy expression I swan to John, probably I swear by Jesus.
A reader of this essay sent in the one-liner "Heck is where you go if you don't believe in Gosh, Jeepers Creepers or the Holy Moley."
Now, are there any of these you didn’t even realize were euphemisms?
Back to the question of why we use euphemisms. The main reason, already part of the definition above, is to sidestep possible social consequences. We simply don’t want to risk offending other people - or sugar-coat the reality - by saying something ‘crude’ such as toilet, crippled, retarded, civilian deaths or bombs. Some are what we now call ‘politically correct’, others simply sound more prestigious such as replacements of the older second-hand, garbage man, janitor.
Some cannot even be written here because they are ‘flag’ words that will trigger blocking of this whole Miniature. Some readers will never even see this essay because of the bold-face four-letter words above.
A deeper reason why words such as religious terms are avoided - particularly in mild oaths - is that some are felt have a power to invoke the attention of what is spoken: God and Jesus Christ possibly out of a fear of using them inappropriately or the risk of calling forth too-powerful religious forces, and hell, damnation, devil out of a fear of invoking the adversaries themselves. This is equally true of death, cancer and many others.
Even in our modern secular society, some words possess a unique but largely unacknowledged power to call forth both good and evil. In this we’re very little different from our most distant ancestors. People throughout recorded history have shown awe of the force of certain ‘magic’ words.
Back to Index
Copyright © 2006 by William Z. Shetter