EUPHEMISMS

Well, we are back on the Vineyard. My craving to shop has been quelled for a while.

EUPHEMISMS

It seems to me we’ve gotten so politically correct we can no longer use meaningful words. Take dead. Or died. No one is willing to describe anyone as having died, or being dead. They are “lost” or “gone”. They’ve “passed on” or are “no longer with us”, or in heaven (yuk, yuk). Come on. Dead is dead. Whose feelings are we protecting here? They don’t care how we describe them. They’re dead.
How about needing a toilet? There’s the “powder room” (which has taken on a whole new meaning with the widespread use of cocaine) or as my father used to say “going to see a man about a dog” or a “horse” I forget which. There’s the ladies room, or as they say in England the water closet or loo--depending upon what class you were born to. Of course in order to not be horrified when your husband excuses himself from the holiday table surrounded by your huge extended family, you’d have to know that John Crapper invented the flush toilet. Hopefully he calls it the john and not the...well, you know. In theme restaurants there might be buoys and gulls, pointers and setters, oh--the cleverness can be endless. It might also end up causing an accident if you don’t know where to go...to go.
You used to be able to describe someone as short. Some where along the line that became an insult so ‘diminutive’ became the word. Now it’s vertically challenged as though being short were a handicap like being blind or deaf. And when was the last time you heard those words used? Now it’s visually or hearing impaired. If I were deaf as a doornail I think I’d be insulted if someone said my hearing was impaired--which according to the dictionary means spoiled, injured or hurt. I don’t know where they came up with challenged either. It means to dare, provoke or threaten. Does that mean if you are follicly challenged you have been threatened by hair?
Human behavior changes word usage and therefore requires the formation of euphemisms in polite or politically correct society. If one were to take a time machine back to Victorian England the language wouldn’t remotely resemble the English of today. If the word you want to use has a “connotation” then an alternative must be found. Take drunk for instance. “They had drunk their fill.” It used to be the perfectly acceptable past participle of drink. Even the dictionary admits it has been removed from polite society. You can’t even call a drunk a drunk any more. You can say three sheets to the wind, pie eyed, stoned, intoxicated, impaired, inebriated, befuddled, hammered, tipsy, feeling no pain, out of it, smashed, blotto, pissed, wasted, seeing double, gassed, plowed, under the table, tanked, wiped out, soused, high, pickled, stewed, tight, plastered, or high as a kite among many others. The police won’t even use drunk. It’s DUI or DWI which uses the aforementioned intoxicated and impaired.
I would like to point out here that there are only three antonyms for drunk--sober, steady, and temperate. That makes me thing that one spends a lot more time describing drunks than nondrunks.
There are a few more that describe the habitually drunk. Sot, wino, lush, alky, barfly--but apparently it is still okay to call them drunks even in polite society as long as they aren’t relatives. Then, of course, they are said to have issues.
Fat is a word that is now only used to be mean. In fact the medical term for fat, obese, has also become ear grinding. Most euphemisms for fat are in fact not nice: lard ass, corpulent, potbellied, portly, puffy, inflated, lumpish, and fat as a pig. Even well fed has a “connotation”. I had a girlfriend in college who always claimed she was born when meat was cheap. Pleasantly plump, big, stocky, large boned, Rubenesque, zaftig-no, no, no there are no good euphemisms for fat. I would therefore like to suggest anticachectic. That should cover it.
When I was a little girl the term crippled was accepted and described any number of misfortunes from birth defects to accidents. We went from that to handicapped. In the 70’s along with every other disenfranchised group in America they became militantly disabled. Even that has a “connotation” so we’ve moved on to challenged, which covers just about every one alive. In the summers when all the galleries are open I feel distinctly art challenged. Can’t swim? Can’t dance? Can’t sing? You are challenged.
I have always had a hard time with what used to be the euphemism for homosexuals. Even though gay is what they have chosen for themselves, I always thought a term that meant happy, joyful, cheerful, light-hearted, etc. was an improvement over queer but, the definition in Webster’s Unabridged says the term gay “has had various senses dealing with sexual conduct since the 17th century.” Prostitutes were called gay women, womanizers were gay men and a brothel was a gay house. The fourth definition of gay is: licentious, dissipated and wanton. I think if I were gay I would want a revote. There must be a better word. And as a heterosexual I’m glad the sobriquet “breeder” hasn’t come into wide use.
I guess people should be able to be called whatever they choose but I wish they would make a decision and stick to it. We’ve gone from Indians to Native Americans and back to Indians. It seems they didn’t like being confused with people from India but then someone figured out Indian stood for indigenous so it was okay again. Blacks have gone from being Negro to colored to black to African American and back to black. If you were born in America we can call you black but if you were born in Africa we should call you African American. I don’t want to be referred to as white any more. Please call me a Northern European American or maybe an Anglo Saxon Protestant American. White is just too pedestrian. After all, we have Italian Americans, Polish Americans, Haitian Americans, the list is endless. It used to be people emigrated here because they wanted, would be thrilled in fact, to be plain old Americans.
I suppose as the English language mutates into a weapon for insulting and hurting people euphemisms become necessary. My personal favorite? Adult Entertainment Industry. Makes what some might call sleazy comparable to a NASDAQ listing.