Euphemania: Our Love Affair With Euphemisms

Euphemisms, I kind of love them. They are especially amusing when I have to explain them to my Iranian father.  Whenever, he comes across them and does not know the meaning, he usually then comments; "how is anyone suppose to learn English with all this American slang?"  However, he is such a good sport; he has a notebook where he writes down the words/phrases so he can refer back to them if needed; even in his late 60s, my dad is still a dedicated student. The most recent euphemism I had to explain to my dad was "couch potato"; however, he called it "potato couch." After learning the meaning behind "couch potato" my dad then used it repeatedly for about a week to describe as many things as possible, including their cockatiel, Joey.

I recently read the book, Euphemania Our Love Affair With Euphemisms. It contains details about where euphemisms come from, why we need them, and what they tell us about who we are. The chapters in the book are: Mincing Words, From Bears to Bowdlerism, Speaking of Sex, Anatomy Class, Secretions and Excretions, Under the Weather and In the Ground, Comestibles, Show Me the Liquidity, Words of War, Brave New Words, and Why We Euphemize. The author, Ralph Keyes, has other interesting books that I plan on reading in the future. Here are some of the most intriguing euphemisms from the book:

• Winston Churchill asked the butler for some breast of chicken. A women sitting next to him told him he shouldn’t use such vulgar terms. Churchill responded, “What should I have asked for?” The lady then responded, “White meat.” The next day, Churchill sent the woman a corsage with the message, “Pin this on your white meat.”
• Patients who once had “nervous breakdowns” now have nervous breakthroughs
• In Midwest towns, brown paper grocery containers are called “sacks” not “bags.” This may be puzzling until you discover that bag is a euphemism for “scrotum” in some parts of the United States.
• “Bloody” was once the most offensive of words in Britain, today it’s a relatively innocuous piece of verbal punctuation
• Multipurpose euphemistic words: blankety-blank, doo-dah, thingamajig, thingy, whatsit, whatnot, and you-know-what.
• Tushie music is what a family in Los Angeles called flatulence. For a while a fart was referred to as “a one-o’clock” in Austraila because before World War II, a cannon was fired at that time of day from Fort Denison in Sydney’s harbor. A onetime euphemism or farting was talking German.
• Excrement is known as “happy toads,” “creating a big job,” “square root of four” and of course “number two.”
• Hell became known as Helen, Halifax, and hen. Or, as Canadians called the devil’s abode, h-e-double-hockey-sticks
• Instead of saying “Good God!” one could say “Good gravy”. Charlie Brown-a creation of devout Christian Charles Schulz-would never say “Good God!” He would say “good grief!” 
• Shakespearean scholar Pauline Kiernan has tallied more than 180 synonyms for female genitals in the Bard’s plays, 200 for the male version, and 700 verbal variations on sex plays.
• Bible euphemisms by American lexicographer Noah Webster:
• “Are there yet any more sons in my womb” was changed to “Shall I bear more sons?”
• Biblical mothers would no longer “give sucke” to their babies, in Webster’s Bible would “nurse their young ones.”
• The line “they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss” in Isaiah 36:12 was refined to read “they may devour their vilest excretions.
• Even seemingly inoffensive phrases such as “the river shall stink” in Exodus 7:18 gave way to “the river shall be offensive in smell”
• Euphemisms for trousers: irrepressibles, indescribables, ineffables, unutterables, nether garments, continuations, don’t name’ems, and mustn’t mention’ems
• Euphemisms for "panty” undergarment, underthing, unmentionable, or smalls (short for small clothes)
• Academy was a euphemism for “brothel” those who worked there were called academicians
• Sexual euphemisms: donating DNA, exchanging chromosomes, horizontal aerobics, hoochie coochie, hanky-panky, and roll in the hay.
• Using sexual euphemism with children: they have a special cuddle or they kiss and hug for a very long time.
• Anatomy euphemisms:
• Balding men can be said to have “high foreheads”
• Wrinkled faces feature “character lines”
• Among men who don’t feel tall enough  prefer to be called compact, trim, or diminutive
• Instead of stomach using words tummy, tumtum, breadbasket, Little Mary, midriff, midsection, abdomen
• When a picture of Barack Obama’s speechwriter Jon Favreau caressing the chest of a life-size Hillary Clinton cutout circulated on the Internet, columnist Kathleen Parker was reduced to writing that Favreau had been figuratively “captured clutching the prospective secretary of state’s, um, pectoral area.”
• Johnson is the last name most often used for the male sex organ
• Behind: buttocks, bum, derriere, heinie, culo, tushie, tush, and keister
• Secretions and Excretions
• Better mouths never “throw up” and certainly wouldn’t upchuc, retch, barf, spew, puke, hurl or hug the throne, but at times do regurgitate, purge or vomit.
• Under the weather and in the ground
• LOL was a euphemism for “little old lady” in hospital corridors
• When they can’t determine what-if anything-is wrong, some doctors say a patient has TEETH (tried everything else; try homeopathy)
• FLK for “funny looking kid” (one with an odd appearance but unspecified malady)
• Wallet biopsy (checking a patient’s ability to pay)
• Euphemisms for drunk: tipsy, all geezed up, and at peace with the floor