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Euphemisms formed from understatements include asleep for dead and drinking for consuming alcohol. " Tired and emotional " is a notorious British euphemism for "drunk", one of many recurring jokes popularized by the satirical magazine Private Eye ; it has been used by MPs to avoid unparliamentary language .
A euphemism is a mild, indirect, or vague term substituting for a harsher, blunter, or more offensive term.. It may also substitute a description of something or someone to avoid revealing secret, holy, or sacred names to the uninitiated, or to obscure the identity of the subject of a conversation from potential eavesdroppers.
Views vary with geography and culture, over time, and among individuals. Many terms that some people view as harmful are not viewed as hurtful by others, and even where some people are hurt by certain terms, others may be hurt by the replacement of such terms with what they consider to be euphemisms (e.g., "differently abled" or "special needs ...
The use of minced oaths in English dates back at least to the 14th century, when "gog" and "kokk", both euphemisms for God, were in use. Other early minced oaths include "Gis" or "Jis" for Jesus (1528). [12] Late Elizabethan drama contains a profusion of minced oaths, probably due to Puritan opposition to swearing.
This is a list of words and phrases related to death in alphabetical order. While some of them are slang, others euphemize the unpleasantness of the subject, or are used in formal contexts.
In the popular jargon of many cultures, the use of sexual slang is a form of humor or euphemism that often creates controversy over its public use. Sexual humor has been seen in many circles as crude and unsophisticated, as well as insulting towards the subject it describes.
Terminological inexactitude is a phrase introduced in 1906 by British politician Winston Churchill.It is used as a euphemism or circumlocution meaning a lie, an untruth, or a substantially correct but technically inaccurate statement.
An example of this is the United States Department of Defense, which won the award three times, in 1991, 1993, and 2001. For the 1991 award, the United States Department of Defense "swept the first six places in the Doublespeak top ten" [26] for using euphemisms like "servicing the target" (bombing) and "force packages" (warplanes). Among the ...