From the Vault: Euphemisms

Sure, euphemisms allow us to talk about something unpleasant or taboo without actually invoking the dreaded word or words -- but what else is going on? In this episode of the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast, Robert and Joe explore the linguistic power of euphemisms to alter and transform the tone or meaning of everyday communication. (Originally published Dec. 13, 2016)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Oh Scissors.
It's Saturday. Time to go into the vault. This is
for a classic episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind
from December of It's our episode on euphemisms. Yeah, this
is a really really neat one and if you haven't
heard this episode, uh, there's a lot more to it
than you might think. There's this drift that occurs, so

(00:28):
you know, obviously a euphemism is rolled out. Initially it's
kind of like a you know, a replacement for a
dirtier word or a less proper word. But then over
time the euphemism itself becomes the dirty word and and
new words have to have to be brought in to
replace it. Uh. So it's yeah, there's there's a lot
to unpack in this episode, and I think everyone can

(00:50):
relate to it. How come oh scissors never became super dirty? Yeah.
One that we use in my household a lot, and
I forget who I stole this from or picked it
up from, is to just use the word cuss uh
in place of an actual cuss word. So you know,
I'll talk to the boy about how it's just hot
as a cuss out here, or you know, stuff like that,

(01:12):
which which is silly, but then it also runs so cute, cute,
but then it runs the risk in the long term
of like cuss will then absorb all of the need
negative energy and become like the foul word. Um so, uh,
that's the world we live in, all right, let's dive
right the cuss in. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your

(01:35):
Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to
Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb
and I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I want to talk
about my favorite scene in the movie fram Stoker's Dracula,
directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Okay, well, there's never a

(01:57):
bad time to discuss, uh that, that particular interpretation of Dracula.
It is a great one, isn't it. It's like horrible,
but it's also great. It has some wonderful design in it.
I love the suit of armor, oh yeah, yeah, and
I love some of the painted backdrops and stuff. But
there's a great scene where so you know, the basic
story of Dracula, these characters are in I think late

(02:18):
Victorian England and Dracula. Count Dracula comes to England from
Transylvania and begins feeding on the locals in England. And uh,
there is the character Van Helsing, the Van vampire slayer
man of great Wisdom, and in the bram Stokers Dracula
France Ford coupla version he has played by Anthony Hopkins
in a wonderfully weird, hyperactive performance. Uh. And there's a

(02:43):
scene where the main character's friend Lucy has been turned
into a vampire by Count Dracula, and Van Helsing and
his associates have just come back from slaying the vampire
version of their friend Lucy, and the character Mina Harker
played in the movie by Win Ower writer she asks
how did Lucy die? Was she in great pain? And

(03:03):
Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing says, yes, she was in
great pain. Then we cut off our head, drove a
stake through her heart and then burned it. And then
she found peace. And I always loved that because of
the last line at the end there and then she
found peace. Yeah, everything else is thoroughly non euphemistic, pretty straightforward.
These are the steps we took to to tear her

(03:26):
corpse apart to to kill her her undead, unnatural life. Right,
but then you have to end it with a euphemism,
So they they have these terms ready at hand. She
found peace, she passed on, she went to a better place.
These are the the friendly terms for death. He could

(03:47):
have just finished as he began by saying and then
she died screaming, but instead he uses the euphemism, and
then she found peace. And it's a great contrast. It's
it's why it's such a wonderful comic, man, But it
makes you aware of the absurdity of the euphemisms that
we use in everyday language. Yeah, I feel like in

(04:07):
researching this episode, we both had to do a lot
of self examination regarding our own use of euphemisms. Uh,
you know just how ubiquitous euphemistic language is. It's everywhere.
It's I bet it's half of all the talk you
do now. Of course, the concept of a euphemism is,

(04:28):
if you're not familiar with the word, it just means
using a friendlier or more acceptable term to express an
idea that for some reason is taboo or uncomfortable. Yeah,
it's interesting thinking about it in terms of having a
four and a half year old in the house because
he he does not have a really a great use

(04:49):
of euphemisms. Yet when he's very blunt, right when he'll
be eating dinner and he'll say I need to go poop,
I'll be right back. He'll he'll even lay out a
detailed plan. I'm going to go poop and wash my
hands and I'm gonna come back and then I'm gonna
fish eater. And wouldn't it be great if we could
do that during dinner party? Yeah? No, No, Like if
an adult did that, you would just think they'd lost

(05:11):
their mind or just we're the most uncouth firson imaginable, right,
But but a child is completely free of this. But yeah,
we would use euphemism. We would say I'm need to
go use the restroom, I'm going to go make use
of the laboratory, or maybe we visit the water closet, yeah, like,
or even I'm going to step out. Yeah, I'm I'm

(05:31):
gonna Well that that's a weird. I've never heard anyone
use that I'm going to step out, Like, what are
you going to do if you're gonna step out? I
don't know, I mean, obviously something you don't want to
talk about. Um. Yeah, I tend to fall back on
I'm gonna go visit the restroom, or I'm gonna use
the rest room and I'll be right back visit like
you're gonna have some quality time. Well, I'm keeping it
vague as to what. I'm not going to give you

(05:52):
the particulars of what's going to happen. Maybe I'm just
washing my hands, maybe I need to blow my nose,
might just stare in the mirror without blinking. Yeah, but
I'm not gonna say I'm gonna go poop and then
I will return. I bet there's a lot of stuff
when you have a kid in the house that you
have to do euphemistically that you you're used to talking
more bluntly, maybe with your spouse or partner, but but

(06:14):
once a kid comes along, you can't say everything the
way you used to. Well, it's interesting. There's a lot
of there's a lot of back and forth too with
kids regarding especially euphemisms regarding the human body, because some
parents will will fall into this habit of using like
cutes here less uh less accurate terminology for parts of

(06:38):
the body, particularly genitalia, which I always find creepy. When
I hear no offense to parents who do that. I'm
not actually judging you. I'm that's just my instinctual reaction
hearing like pp and stuff. It always sounds like, yeah, yeah,
we try not to do that in our house. I
mean that everyone everyone can, you know, do their own
thing by all means. But yeah, we try and say,

(06:59):
all right, enis testicles, um, et cetera. Because you know,
I feel it's important for them to have an accurate
understanding of their body and then to be able to
describe their body, uh seriously to say, you know a physician. Yeah,
if they needed to talk to a doctor, they would
need the correct terms. Yeah. But but that's an area

(07:20):
where in parenting circles people kind of go on your
arguments on both sides. Do you do you ever find
yourself like wanting to curse in front of the child,
but you have to find another word? Oh yeah, all
the time. Sometimes I don't find that other word. Um uh.
This morning, even driving through traffic, and my son reminded me, said,
they can't hear you. I guess that other drivers cannot

(07:44):
hear me. That is a perceptive kid. Yeah, but but
I try, I do try and use certain euphemisms or
just it's almost easier for me to just come up
with a nonsense word, so referring to other drivers as
dumbledoors or calling them crab drivers or something like that.
Crab drivers. That's because they're kind of scuttling around back
and forth, side to side instead of going in straight lines.

(08:04):
Uh Like, I find that easier to do, because sometimes
it's difficult to make a euphemism stick, because if I'm
if I'm really irritated with another driver, my brain really
wants to use, uh, the the F word or or
the or the S word, or one of these more
actually profane words from a vocabulary. And there's something about

(08:27):
a watered down version of it just will not suit. Yeah,
it seems to have a power, almost a magical power.
And I think maybe that goes back to some deeply
rooted part of the cursed tradition in our brains, where
you know, thousands of years ago, somebody issues a curse,
they think that that has power. I think it's actually
doing something. Yeah, the thing gang is not gonna not

(08:49):
gonna got not gonna do. It's not gonna suit. Fudge
is not gonna work. So euphemisms in our house. Uh,
my wife Rachel and I get a lot of enjoyment
out of talking about our dog in un euphemistic terms
when people normally would. So one example, when our dog's
legs and jaws are jerking in his sleep, you know
he's having a little doggie dreams. I think many dog

(09:11):
owners would be inclined to say, oh, he's dreaming about
chasing something, but we would say, oh, he's dreaming about killing,
which he is. He's definitely dreaming about killing little animals. Yeah,
that's that's that, that's true. Yeah, I guess I do
a certain amount of that with our our pet as well.
I'll give one more example though about about raising a

(09:32):
child and euphemisms, is that sometimes you still do not
succeed in really driving home the names for things, and
without the proper term, sometimes the like the children's name
for it is going to be totally even more unsuitable.
So I don't think I drove home properly. You know

(09:54):
what the anus is to my son, And so one
day we had some people guess to the house and
this is something he hadn't even met before. But he
walks outside, just got it from the nap, and he
proudly announces quote, uh, it itches where poop comes out
on my bum and uh, and I think, arguably, like this,
this is a more uncouth statement. Grantedies four and a half,

(10:15):
so nobody cares, but still it would be more accurate
to say my anus itches. Right. But in a way
what he said was euphemism. Really it's an anti euphemism,
and we'll get into that in a in a bit.
The the euphemism is actually cuter there in the situation
where a kid says it. If the kid had said anus,
that might have been weirder. Yeah, But if an adult
had said it itches on my bum where poop comes out,

(10:38):
then that, you know, you would call the authorities exactly. Okay,
So uh, let's zoom in on the concept of the
euphemism and try to figure out what it does, what
is its role in language apart from the obvious. Now,
we we did say that it's essentially a nice word.
It's a word that takes the place of a word that,

(10:58):
for some reason is is inappropriate offensive. Uh, something people
don't want to say or think about. Maybe that conjures
up too concreteive an image. Yeah, I mean, on the
surface of things, it's don't say that, say this, but
of course it's it's more than that. A euphemism has
the power to alter the meaning of the word, or
at least the spirit and tone of the word. Right.

(11:19):
It's like a black and white image versus a colorized image.
Euphemisms allow us to colorize our our linguistic choices to
a certain extent. And I think we can all think
of various examples where a euphemism simultaneously makes a word
less offensive and and yet creep here at the same time,
such as many of these genitalia euphemisms that we've been

(11:40):
discussing exactly Yeah pp hearing an adult say it, it's
creepy even rhymes. Yeah, I would say most genitalia euphemisms, uh,
kind of sound like that they have this this this
vibe of being at one point they're they're deflecting us
from the thing we're talking about, and yet colorize it
in a way that is is tasteful. Okay, So there

(12:01):
are a bunch of different ways that you can come
up with the euphemism, right like you you can put
it together in several ways. There's a word that people
have instinctually felt somehow they want to start avoiding saying,
but they still need the concept in everyday language. You
still have to be able to refer to the thing
the word refers to somehow, so you've got to come

(12:22):
up with a different word. So where do these different
words come from? Well, you can of course really go
down the rabbit hole figuring out what sort of euphemisms
are doing what. But here are some of the basic
classifications to consider. There's a term of foreign origin, okay,
like a dairy air or copulation urination. You're using a

(12:42):
more elegant and uh and in foreign term for what
you're talking about. In English, a lot of times the
euphemisms kind of come from Latin constructions more so than
from the Anglo Saxon constructions, where the the short straightforward
word sounds kind of rude and concrete, and that the
Latin origin word sounds more abstract and less like it

(13:06):
less it's less likely to conjure an image. Another example
is abbreviations, for instance S O B or food bar.
These are both examples where we we simply abbreviate a
a phrase that would otherwise be offensive to some right,
and I guess in most cases you would still consider
the abbreviation somewhat offensive, but maybe less so you uh,

(13:31):
the one I like you made the note of this,
but I like the idea of using really vague abstractions
such as doing it, doing it or um. The source
I was looking at mentioned like situation, like just referring
to the such and such situation. One that always has
annoyed me is the situation the situation room? Like what

(13:54):
what situation is the room for? Is it a war room?
Because if it's a war room, let's call it a
war room. Is it an emergency room? Is it let's
let's call it what it is? The situation room could
be about anything, okay. There would also be the concept
of just saying that you don't want to say a thing,
essentially like unmentionables. Yes, he who should not be named

(14:15):
right for Lord Voldemort. Uh. And then there of course
mispronunciations like freaking or god. I guess is gosh darn it?
One is replacing God with gosh? Does that work? I
guess it could be like gold gold darn't gold? Aren't it?
That would be one? Yeah? And then their plays on abbreviation,

(14:36):
which I really hadn't thought much of, but bull roar
is one that we actually used recently in talking about
bs or just to go ahead and bleet meum a bullet, right,
But I don't think I've ever used barbecue sauce. I
saw that one listed as well. Where'd you see that?
It was in one of the papers so that we

(14:56):
were looking at they mentioned barbecues. So I would like
to hear from anyone who who says that's just the
load of barbecue sauce. Barbecue has never heard that. It
must be a regional, regional thing. What kind of barbecue sauce,
especially if it's regional North Carolina, South Carolina, I don't know.
Or beasting. Beasting would be a good one. Oh is
that actually used? No? I just made that up. I
was trying to think, what what what could you that's

(15:18):
even that even has some of the same consonants in it. Yeah, um,
how about malarkey or maybe malarkey? Is malarkey actually more
offensive in in its origin? And we're just it's one
of these things where we don't know what it means anymore.
I have no idea where it comes from. It would
be horrible to go look that up later and find
out it's a deeply offensive term yeah, And you know,

(15:39):
I feel like that happens a time or two as well.
We we have something we think is is a euphemism,
but in reality we're just using a far more offensive
term than that fewer people are familiar with. Okay, But
so when you use euphemisms, how however you form the
new phrase or the new word, you're essentially doing maybe

(15:59):
three different kind of things, right, Yeah, when you bust
out euphemism, you may be employing what is called circumlocution
to to speak around that which cannot be said, ye, circumlocution,
And that's something we often use in a non euphemistic
way to like, we use it when we're speaking a
language we're not very familiar with. If you've ever tried

(16:19):
to speak another language, you often don't have the word
for a thing, so instead you circumlocute, You say a
bunch of things that are sort of explaining the concept
of the word to try to get to it. But
this would be a case where you do the same
thing not because you don't have the word, but because
you don't want to use the word. Yeah. And another

(16:40):
example would be a taboo deformation. So we're just we're
altering the spelling or pronunciation of of that which cannot
be said, So go fudge yourself, um you mother effort.
That would be an example of of the use of taboo,
defamation or gold aren't yeah called aren't it? We're just
take like thinking, think of the obscenity. Is this clay object,

(17:01):
and we're just wrenching it into a less profane shape,
but we still know what its original shape was. It's
still it's still echoes that form enough for us to
use it, albeit in a blunted form. Yeah, And I
guess the other main thing would be sort of robbing
the word of its power to conjure imagery. Yeah, double speak, right, um,

(17:23):
making neutral the awful. I think one of the best
examples of this is to say, uh, the enemy combatant
was neutralized, which sounds far nicer than we We shot
Rolf to death and his his family will be without him. Now.
You know, Rolf was hit with an explosive that resulted
in complete body deft defragmentation, which I guess is that'd

(17:46):
be sort of that's kind of a euthanism as well, right,
but yeah, defragmentation, what would it be? Rolf was hit
by an explosion that severed many arteries. Yes, but you know,
it's not that funny. I don't know why, I'm no, no no,
but it's kind of getting it as we try to
to dance around Rolf's death, and he even discussed more
accurately what happened to Rolf. Are some things in life

(18:10):
almost like too dreadful, Like there's there's no way that language,
at least brief language, can accurately describe something that that
is that horrible. I don't know, I mean, it's interesting
to look at the general categories of things that we
have euphemisms for. It's not just arbitrary. It's like, it's
not like we just have euphemisms for anything. We have

(18:31):
euphemisms usually for terms having to do with the inevitable
processes of the human body, like like elimination of waste, uh,
sex and death. Those those are the big things that
you have euphemisms for, but also for culturally sensitive issues
like you know, for names of marginalized groups that are

(18:53):
discriminated against or something like that. Yeah, and uh, you know,
as well as the the way these things are shadowed.
And certainly as there's a whole area of business euphemism
to discussed discussed as well, oh absolutely, yeah. Of course,
we have a number of different euphemisms to to to
refer to firing someone, which is kind of the workplace

(19:15):
version of death right we have. For instance, you may
have heard about layoffs, downsizing, right sizing. That's like, that's
a euphemism on top of a euphemism like downsizing. That's
you know, we're not downsizing, we're right sizing. We're just
we're just making the organization the correct size for what
we're doing here. Head count adjustment or head count reduction

(19:38):
uh an r I F or reduction enforce a realignment.
These are also so fabulous, wonderful terms that allow UH
management to do horrible things to people's lives. The words
about feeling bad about it. The worst is let go.
It's like you're free. Oh yeah, we had we had

(19:58):
to let We had to let you go. You should
be making us right. I think, maybe more than anywhere
else I go in in my life, the business world
is absolutely built out of euphemism. So I think a
reason for this might be that the business relationship is
essentially a cutthroat relationship most of the time. If employers

(20:19):
can scam customers or employees out of another nickel and
get away with it and keep making money. They will
do it most of the time, and vice versa. You know,
every everybody in the business relationship is trying to get
an extra nickel and and give as little as they
can for it. But at the same time, customers and
employers and employees interact with one another all the time.

(20:41):
You have to see your employer on a regular basis.
I mean most people do. Uh, So they want to
have pleasant relationships with the people they interact with. So
you kind of live in this state of denial about
the heartless, cutthroat principle at the foundation of your work relationships.
And it's weird trying to be friendly with your boss
when you're thinking about the fact that your boss could

(21:03):
fire you at any time, and in some places, for
any reason. So we we sort of pack our business
lives with euphemisms to avoid thinking about this cutthroat reality.
In addition to the euphemisms for firing. One thing I
was thinking about was, Robert, have you ever noticed that,
at least in my experience, maybe in years two, businesses
seem to never want to talk about quote money. Oh yeah, yeah,

(21:27):
So maybe I'm imagining this, but it seems like money,
it's always removed to one higher level of abstraction, like
revenue or returns or something like that. Uh. And it's
as if talking about money directly would reveal that the
whole enterprise is kind of tacky at its core, or
you know, not only revenue but rev ev share, Like

(21:51):
that's the term that is thrown around a lot in
our industry now. And yet you talk about rev share
then it's just an item on on a sheet. But
if you say, I want you to give me more
of some of the money that you're getting for the
thing that I'm making for you so that you can
make money, uh, then it gets a little less tidy, right,
It's like, why are you making it like that? It's
like you've said something really mean when you're just saying

(22:15):
in direct terms what you're talking about. Yeah. I often
think about you know, we we've already the studies in
terms of businesses where corporations are essentially psychopaths. I often,
and I often think of it in terms of like
artificial intelligence, uh, beings than various cyberpunk stories. So a
corporation is essentially this this demon, and this demon is

(22:38):
bound by whatever chains of law and uh and policy
and regulations that we can muster to keep it in check.
And then we we sort of handle it with specialized
gloves often you know, composed of euphemisms that allow us
to handle it and benefit from its presence. But there's
no denying that it's it's horrible demonic nature. It's a

(23:01):
nice analogy, it's it comes from I guess I read
one too many Warhammer book and in my time, Oh,
they have demon gloves for the corporations. Um, we'll know
they have actual demons sometimes and they're chained up and
they serve the who is it the witch hunters? Yeah, excellent, Well,
I think we should take a quick break and when
we come back, we're going to talk about some of

(23:22):
the cultural implications of euphemisms. So, yeah, we're talking about
language here. We have multiple languages throughout the world. Every
culture is it kind of emerges from its own linguistic world,
and therefore we have we have different uses of euphemism

(23:44):
in in different languages. We have different uses of euphemism
in just different versions of different languages, different dialects, right,
British English versus American English, and so a lot of
our reference points are going to be English, but it
is worth looking into the use of euphemisms may be
in other languages too. Yeah, two great examples I think

(24:04):
come from British English and Mandarin Chinese. So the the
Economists ran a great and naturally unattributed article back in
um titled making Murder Respectable, and it runs through a
number of examples of euphemisms that are currently uh or
or sort of previously in use. I think some of
the British ones have fallen out of favor. Did you

(24:25):
notice that nice euphemism. They're unattributed, where the real term
would be the author's name is not listed. Yeah, you
can either you would even say the the author is
anonymous or or not credited for their work. But I
mean that's the economist business as a whole, separate, separate,
separate discussion. Uh So, Yeah, we have a number of

(24:46):
course American euphemisms, which the the author in this uff
this article points out that these of course just replaced
non offensive words terms with new non offensive words in terms.
We'll get into the details on this in a bit,
but in Hails, something that's that's been referred to as
the euphemism treadmill right by the linguist and general scholar

(25:06):
Stephen Pinker. Yeah. Yeah, contemporary, very very much contemporary, still
commenting on the world we find ourselves in today. British euphemisms,
on the other hand, they create quote a pleasant sense
of of complicity between the euphemist and the individual that's
listening to the euphemist. The first few examples that the

(25:29):
author rolls outcome from British oh bits. So a drunkard
will be described as as convivial or cheery that's great, um,
A niphomaniac is uh has notable vivacity, and in in
prior times, you would of course encountered a homosexual only

(25:52):
as a quote confirmed bachelor. With all of these, it's
almost as if the person using the euphemism and the
person hearing it are so sort of in on a
joke together. Yeah, yeah, there's a And that's something that
the author gets into here too, is you you have
to be on it on the joke to really understand
at least proper British, proper British conversation. You have to

(26:17):
know the cues, otherwise you're gonna have no idea what
you're talking about. One more from the oh bit world, though,
is that there's the mysterious burdened by occasional irregularities in
his private life. Private life, which is delightfully that like
what what I assume that means scandal scandal ridden life.
But that's that's a lot sharper. So Yeah. The author

(26:39):
points out that there are a number of passive cues
in sort of traditional high British conversation, such as, incidentally, incidentally, Joe, Uh,
this would mean I am now telling you the purpose
of this discussion, even though I'm saying incidentally, as if
this is just an incidental point I want to make,
I'm actually saying, all right, cut all the crap, this

(27:03):
is the real reason we're meeting here today. Another one
that the the author mentions with the greatest respect, with
the greatest respect, Joe Uh, that means you are mistaken
and silly, which which which seems to be the complete
opposite of what you're literally saying. I can think of
a Southern American equivalent, was that, bless his heart. Bless

(27:24):
his heart. Yeah, bless his heart. That means sort of
the opposite of what it said. I think that's a
great example. Now, the the author of this economist piece
also pointed out that there are a number of Chinese euphemisms,
and these, like American euphemisms, often stem from squeamishness. It's
not proper to be too direct, especially if you might
offend somebody. So it's this idea of of a polite opacity.

(27:49):
So instead of turning down an invitation, uh, and this
might be like a this can be a really formal invitation,
like you know, a political of a political nature. One
might be hold that that something is a boufong bian,
which means not convenient, when that, of course really means
we're not doing that. That's not happening. So it's not

(28:09):
like this is a bad time for me. Can we
reschedule right? It's it's very reminiscent of I imagine everyone
out there has some friend or acquaintance that's very flaky,
very wishy washy about their appointments. You say, hey, do
you want to hang out this week? Let me check
my calendar. Uh, let me see, I'll get back to you,
you know, instead of sometimes that means that they sometimes yeah,

(28:32):
that's that's the thing. And if you didn't, if you
didn't know better, you might you know, you might have
a policy an official inquiry with the Chinese government official
and you and you might say, oh, well it's not convenient,
I'll try again tomorrow, but no, you're not getting the message.
It's not convenient, it's not going to happen. Perhaps Ever,

(28:52):
another example is is one might ask for an explanation
of something and you might get boching chu, which means, uh,
I am not clear, which just means you're not going
to be told like it basically means I can't tell
you that or I won't tell you that. But it's
it's it's casting that in the guise of why I'm

(29:12):
not really clear on the information, but it also kind
of sounds like I am not clear and that I
am not I am open, I am open. Yeah, So
I find it interests and the examples like this in
every language, and perhaps our listeners out there, if you
have particular examples you're aware of in a tongue that
you speak or have some history with, we'd love to
hear those examples. Oh yeah, I always love hearing the

(29:35):
different idioms from around the world that we get from listeners.
One of my favorites was we heard from a listener
and oh, now I apologize, I can't remember which language
it was. I think it was Swedish or Norwegian or
maybe uh, Scandinavian language, and the expression was it was
an expression that means something is a miss, and the

(29:57):
term is there are owls in the moss. I love it.
That's great, there are owls in the moss. That's that's
pretty good. If you're the one who sent that to us,
which I still think about that a lot. Thank you
so much. Okay, Well, for one other arena of of
the interaction between culture and euphemism, I was thinking about

(30:18):
what about religious euphemisms? So I sometimes see, here's just
one example. I want to talk about a few different examples.
One of them is the way some Christians use euphemism
to talk about certain doctrines that they haven't explicitly rejected,
but obviously aren't comfortable talking about directly. And one example

(30:41):
that I have encountered before is the Christian doctrine of hell. Uh. Now,
there are many doctrines of hell, and I don't want
to paint all believers with the same view, but one
common interpretation throughout the history of the Church is the
sort of Dante's Inferno interpretation, saying that Dante is more
or less correct. After death, people who are non Christians

(31:02):
or people who are unrepentant sinners go to a place
of eternal torture and agony in fire. And some modern
Christians explicitly deny that premise. They just don't believe that
in that or they don't interpret the references to Hell
that way. Right. Yeah, we actually have an older Stuff
to Wear your Mind episode on this that that goes
through some of the theologies, and I think we have

(31:23):
a we have a list or gallery that I can
link to on the landing page for this episode of
Stuff to Bring your Mind dot com. But yeah, you
have everything from this literal interpretation to annihilation theology, which
says when you die going to Hell is that simply
essentially you are consumed. Your soul is just completely obliterated. Yeah,
you just ceased to be. Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course,

(31:45):
as you allude to, some some do accept and embrace
it and say explicitly what they mean, you know, Hell
is a place of torment, depart from me and everlasting fire.
But there are some people who at least rhetorically seems
stuck in the middle. I hear this fairly often. They
don't reject the doctrine, but they don't want to talk
about it bluntly. So you get phrases that are things

(32:09):
like the the unrighteous or the unbeliever will suffer divine
judgment or something like that. It's euphemistic in nature. You know,
you haven't rejected the belief, but you just don't want
to talk about the particulars of it. That's interesting. So
they're basically they might, for instance, they might believe in
this uh, this sort of torture uh revenge fantasy of hell,

(32:34):
but they're using the language of annihilation theology instead as
a euphemism for what they actually believe, or just not
being specific about what the judgment entails. Yeah, I mean,
I think there are there are other terms too. That
was the first one that came to my mind. It
ha's such a weird area to consider, right, because so
many of these when you're using a euphemism for you know,

(32:56):
your your but you're talking about a thing that has
a definite reality. There's there's nothing subjective. It's not a
doctrine or belief, right, there is an objective, but there's
an objective their objective buttocks, there is an anus. There's
no denying there no, there no, no, no denying these things.
But when you get into Hell, they are all these discussions.

(33:17):
There's there's been, there's a there's a there's a broad
spectrum of theologies regarding its existence or non existence. I mean,
I'm I'm personally of the mind that whatever your belief
about Hell is, you should you should, you should speak
clearly about it. Another type of religious euphemism, I would say,

(33:37):
is motivated by a very different type of thing. Instead
of being uncomfortable with certain concepts or not wanting to
talk about certain things, it extends from a perception of
holiness or reverence. And this is the evolution of the
name of God in Judaism throughout history. So it's not

(33:58):
that the name of God has changed so much, or
at least not much in recent history in Judaism, but
that at certain points throughout history, usage of the name
has become taboo because of beliefs about not taking the
name of the Lord in vain. And thus it is
required to have a new word if you want to

(34:19):
talk about religious ideas such as your belief in God
without referencing this word, that you might be using the
wrong way. And so some of my info here is
coming from a book on Hebrew and Western the Hebrew
and Western Christian Name of God by Robert J. Wilkinson.
But in the Hebrew Bible, the Jewish God has several names.

(34:39):
You've got names like ale and ale yawn Uh, Eloheim,
but the most common is Yahweh, the four letter word
that's often called the tetragrammaton meaning four letters um. And
at a certain point in the history of Judaism, and
generally in that the Hellenistic period, you know, the Greek Conquest,
a taboo on pronouncing the name emerged. And so, to

(35:03):
quote one story about this origin from the Babylonian Talbot, quote,
the Greeks, and that's referring to the Seleucid rulers of
the region at that time, decreed that the name of
God may not be spoken aloud. But when the Hasmanians,
and it was a group of Jewish rebels, grew in
strength and defeated them, they decreed that the name of

(35:24):
God be used even in contracts. And an example of
this might be something like by the name of Yahweh,
I will paint your chicken coop if you give me
a tray of corn money um and so. But then
continuing from the Talmud, when the rabbis heard about this,
they said, tomorrow this person will pay his debt and
the contract will be thrown on a garbage heap. So

(35:46):
they forbade its use in contracts. Uh. So it wasn't
the use of the name that was necessarily inherently wrong.
It was just that using it in this way for
sort of everyday purposes made it vulnerable to accidental defilement. Okay,
so you have, in a sense, you have a very
secular use of divine terminology and uh and it's not

(36:09):
proper to throw that around, right, to just make up
a contract with the name of God, and that you'd
end up throwing in the trash. It's like if you
were what's the the the Clive Barker film where you
say that the name three times and he shows up,
candy Man, candy Man. Yea, So it's like candy Man.
Can't you don't want to say candy man all the
time because he will show up and start killing people.

(36:29):
You've got a limited number of times you can invoke that. Yeah,
so we need to have another name for candy Man.
You call him like, you know, sweet guy, sweet guy. Yeah,
But then after a while, like there's still a candy
man is just so magical and so potent that he's
going to creep into that term as well and start
popping up when you say that words, So you gotta
come up with another one. Yeah, But so anyway, going on,

(36:51):
in the same spirit of avoiding accidental defilements, some Jews
throughout history have avoided saying the tetragrammaton name out loud,
even in context where I would think one would assume
it was probably not being defiled, such as in reading
of the Torah. So you might have readings allowed from
the Torah where the reader would come to the four

(37:11):
letter name of God, and then instead of saying it,
the reader would substitute something like the word ada and i,
which means lord or master. But then in time, the
originally euphemistic ad and i, which was just substituted to
avoid saying the original name, also came to be charged
with the original holiness of the name of God. And

(37:33):
so then later you'd have some Jews referring to God
as Hashem, meaning the name. So you have this evolutionary
process by which um a word is used to avoid disrespect.
But then that word sort of becomes worthy of respect
in in its own right. But then anyway, So, according
to the Talmud, sometimes shortly after the conquest of Alexander

(37:55):
the Great, the High Priest stopped saying the name of
God when when giving blessings. And in the Missionah, which
is a work of Jewish rabbinic literature putting down lots
of Jewish oral traditions into writing, the name of God
is often avoided and substituted with other words associated with God,
like Heaven or the place, or the Holy One, blessed

(38:18):
be he uh and so again, I think these euphemisms
are interesting because they're not used to avoid mentioning something
unpleasant or offensive, but to avoid accidental defilement of a
word that, in this religious concept context, is believed to
be holy, believed to be treated with reverence and respect.

(38:38):
That's interesting because I think it's easy to to believe
that you just have all these different names for for
God solely because hey, God's really cool, really important and
has all these uh, these these different points in time
where people are considering it, and therefore they need a
different name for it, uh, you know. And then we
see that that sort of loose interpretation reflect did in

(39:01):
our discussion of unreal deities, where so like Goes, Goes
or the Ghazarian has several different names and Ghostbusters, Um,
probably just because Goes are is cool and needs a
number of names, right, Yeah, it's true like you've lost
the original, uh, the original rationale for all this diversification,
but you've still got the process. It's a cargo cult

(39:24):
of naming deity. But I was just wondering, are there
similar euphemisms and other religions too, for for either one
for talking about concepts that might be uncomfortable to some believers,
yet they haven't been fully rejected or talking about things
that cannot be named out of respect. Yeah, we we
briefly talked about this before we came in here, and

(39:45):
we had a hard time nailing down another example. We
we talked about the devil a little bit, but I
think that's not exactly the same. It's not because there's
this there's this timeline in our development of of of
the devil as a concept that's really kind of similar
to our concept of l where the devil as the
sort of popular conception of the western devil or even

(40:06):
like the classical devil or the or the Miltonian devil
or Dante's devil, Like, these are all vastly different things,
and they occur at different points in our evolving conception
of the devil, and even just been a biblical basis. Uh,
you go back to say the Book of Job, like,
that's not the devil, that's that's some guy who works
for God. That's called Satan that I believe stems from

(40:30):
the Hebraic Hasitan, which was just a court role. Yeah, exactly.
But then I think we've also not, um, we've not
had the same kind of evolution because the devil is
not really considered holy. So yeah, in fact, there's often
the the the opposite effort to to really cast the
devil down instead refer to refer to it as a

(40:51):
worm or or what have you. Sometimes we should do
a history of the Devil show. Oh yeah, we should.
But anyway, so I want to move on yet and
from one totally on uncontroversial subject religion to another one politics. Um. So,
there is definitely a strong cultural import of euphemism in politics.

(41:14):
And this is this probably won't come as a surprise
to you, but exactly how it works out, you might
be a little fuzzy on. And this is something that is, uh,
you can definitely find explored in a really lucid and
fascinating way in the nineteen forty six essay by George Orwell,
the English journalist and critic called Politics and the English Language.

(41:35):
And in this essay, which by the way, is a
lot of people might have read it in college as
sort of just like a writing style essay. But I
think it's a great read. It's just fun to read.
He's got a great writing style, uh. In anyway, In
this essay, Orwell lays out a series of criticisms as
what he saw as the deterioration of the quality of
published writing in English in his time. So he's coming

(41:58):
right out of World War Two. You know, You've you've
got a you've got a victorious Soviet Union to deal with.
You've just you've just had the fall of the Nazi regime.
The world has been in chaos for a while. But anyway,
he so he's talking about in this in this climate,
the English language has really been put through the ringer.

(42:19):
Oh and I just used a cliche that he would
aborre because he attacks the use of cliches like that
in his essay. But in one famous passage, or Well
translates a well written verse from the King James Bible
translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes into the style he's
referring to in modern English. And so I just got

(42:41):
to read this because it's too good. The King James
Bible says, I returned and saw under the sun, that
the race is not to the swift, nor the battle
to the strong, neither yet bred to the wise, nor
yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor men
of skill. But time and chance happeneth to them all. Okay,

(43:06):
Orwell's rewriting of that in modern English is objective. Considerations
of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure
in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with
innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable
must invariably be taken into account. Now it does communicate

(43:28):
the same sense basically, right. Yeah, I almost feel like
like his translation of it is better. Maybe it I
think maybe it just comes from reading too many, you know,
god awful peer of viewed papers for work. But but
I feel like that when kind of drove home a little,
a little, a little easier for me. Oh man, I

(43:49):
can't agree with you here, Robert. That is awful. Come on, yeah, hey,
you know okay, Well anyway, so so Orwell goes on
to say in in his main characterization that quote modern
writing at its worst does not consist in picking out
words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images
in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in

(44:10):
coming together long strips of words which have already been
set in order by someone else, and making the results
presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of
writing is that it is easy, and I think there's
some truth to that, like that, when you use these
sort of cliches and bloated phrases, it writing comes very naturally.

(44:33):
You don't have to think as much about the images
or the words you're choosing as you do when you
try to write things in a simpler, uh more concrete way. Well,
I mean there's this second example. I was. I instantly
thought of peer of viewed papers because there is this
this often very specific, clinical, technical discussion of what's going on. Often,

(44:54):
you know, not not all the time, but sometimes this
can feel a bit soulless, but you can you can
read it and you you basically you basically know what
they're talking about in in great detail, and there's less
interpretation involved. And so yeah, it's it's a less creative venture, uh,
either to to write or to read. But is it

(45:17):
more exact? I don't know if it is. And I
think Well or Well might disagree with you, but I
would like to hear what you think. When season so,
I want to get to his main argument. Then maybe
you can come back and flog or Well for me.
So for Orwell, the decline in the quality of writing
was not just an esthetic concern. It's not just bad
writing that is less enjoyable to read. It is actually

(45:41):
a threat against truth, freedom and social democracy. English quote
becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but
the slovenly of our language makes it easier for us
to have foolish thoughts. And so if you've read Orwell's
novel novel nine or Robert, I assume you've read in
nineteen eighty four, Yeah, you'll recall that at the time

(46:05):
of the story takes place, the totalitarian government in the
novel working under Big Brother is engaged in the creation
of a new form of English known as new speak
and uh. In In Politics and Language, Orwell says quote,
if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. And
new Speak in in nineteen eighty four very much embodies this.

(46:26):
It reflects. I think what Orwell saw is the political
power of language. Essentially, control the use of language, and
you control how people think, control how people think, and
you command them to your purpose. Uh. And So I
want to read one long ish quote from Politics in
the English Language where he really gets to how euphemisms
are used in political writing and political journalism. So here's

(46:50):
the quote, with a few abridgements for length. In our time,
political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question, begging,
and sheer, cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air.
The inhabitants are driven out into the countryside, the cattle

(47:13):
machine gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets.
This is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of
their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no
more than they can carry. This is called transfer of
the population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for

(47:34):
years without trial, shot in the back of the neck,
or sent to die of scurvy and arctic lumber camps.
This is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is
needed if one wants to name things without calling up
mental pictures of them. Consider, for instance, some comfortable English
professor defending Russian totalitarianism, and he's talking about Stalinism. There

(47:59):
he cannot say outright, I believe in killing off your
opponents when you can get good results by doing so. Probably,
therefore he will say something like this, while freely conceding
that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features with which the
humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, i think,
agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political

(48:20):
opposition is an unavoidable concommitant of transitional periods, and that
the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon
to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of
concrete achievement. The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism.
A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like
soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.

(48:45):
So what do you think about that, Robert No, I mean,
I I agree with that. It's it guess it comes
down to like this kind of this kind of writing
they were talking about, is it's essentially writing like a
machine and and inviting the reader to think about the
the topic like a machine with sort of this with

(49:07):
without any of these human touches. That that that add
humanity to the subject matter, which in a I think
in a scientific environment like or certainly, and then say
a study about E. Coli in a in a lab experiment,
that's perfectly that's perfectly fair. Like that's the way to
do it. But of course, when you when you're getting
into um, you know, affairs of politics and war certainly,

(49:31):
um even domestic politics. You know, the people's lives hang
in the balance, and if you distance yourself with language enough,
then you don't have to deal with the the the
actual flesh and blood ramifications of what you're talking about.
But then the other side of that is it's somebody's
job right to make a better killing machine. It's somebody's
job to uh to to cut how the funding of

(49:55):
public housing. You know, so of course they're going to
try and do it in a way that makes them
feel less ikey, right, I mean so Orwell says political language.
Uh and he says that this comes from both sides,
from conservatives to anarchists. Is designed to make lies sound
truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of

(50:17):
solidity to pure wind. And I think there is a
lot of truth to that. Yeah, that you I mean,
I understand the need for it. I'm not saying that
it has done purely out of calculating malice. There there
are people who work in in government who do things
that you would probably think of as bad, but who

(50:38):
don't think of themselves as bad people. And so they
have they have they've got to come up with some
way of getting around this. And it's this circumlocution, or
it's this neutralizing language, like we talked about earlier, coming
up with these abstract terminologies, naming things in terms of
processes rather than of consequences. You know, Uh, it's not

(50:58):
that we killed a guy, but the enemy was neutralized
and for or well, you know, I think these types
of phrases and euphemisms are they're not limited to the
rulers themselves right, that they're not limited just two people
who want to justify themselves in tyranny and stupefy the
masses with this lullaby of empty, denatured language. They're also

(51:18):
used by people who should know better, people who who
might even be critical of those in power. Euphemisms and
mushy phrases are used, he emphasizes, because they're easy. They
make writing easier, and they make thinking about concepts easier.
Euphemisms are like a lubricant that just allows you to
easily insert your mind into a conversation without struggling with

(51:42):
the most difficult implications of it. And for or well,
this is not just applicable to these political euphemisms, you know,
for killing and and and these horrible acts, but it
goes into everyday conversation. So he writes quote phrases like
a not unjustifiable assumption leaves much to be desired, would

(52:03):
serve no good purpose, A consideration which we should do
well to bear in mind. Are a continuous and he says,
those are a continuous temptation, A packet of aspirins always
at one's elbow, And I really do like that idea
of the euphemism as a painkiller. Yeah, it makes me think, well, yeah,
I'm instantly thinking of of of various recent examples of

(52:28):
of strong statements about about war and the use of
warm in a political climate. And here I'm using euphemisms
already to to talk about it. But it's it's like,
it's like, if you have this sentence where you're going
to say, we are going to eliminate enemy combatants a right,
and if you if you start removing some of the

(52:49):
euphemisms there, you still have to try and make that
unacceptable sentence to whoever whoever is saying or um or
listening to it. So if if you replace eliminate with kill,
if you replace eliminate with with you know, um, carpet
bomb or something like that, and if you were put
then you're still going to have to try and make

(53:11):
it a sentence that you can live with. And sometimes
that comes. So what else can you change in that sentence?
You can change enemy combatants to barbarians, you can, or
any other various form that also dehumanizes what's going on.
But by point should by changing the direction of the dehumanization, right, Well,
that would be what was what is known as a dysphemism. R.

(53:32):
There's that. How you pronounce it? A euphemism would be
you know it's euphemism comes from you meaning good and
female female meaning speech. So a dysphemism is the opposite. Essentially,
you're you're taking a concept that's inherently neutral and applying
a term to it that is a bad filtering terms.

(53:54):
It essentially filters out the good imagery or things you
might associate with a thing and gives it bad connotations. Well,
what's a good example here of a dispimism for our listeners?
How about? How about somebody is not happy with a
deal that they made. You know, they bought a car
or something, and they say I got ripped off. Oh,

(54:15):
And to take it a step further, they would say,
oh I got screwed. Yeah, I really got screwed in
that deal. Did you really get quote unquote screwed in
any of the various interpretations there? No, you just bought
something and you you later regretted how much you spent
on it or something. But they they have used the
screws on my hands and my fingers, and now I

(54:35):
have lost the ability to write. Oh is that for
thumb screws. Yay, I'm thinking of a very medieval interpretation. Okay,
but either way, ripped off you didn't ripped off means
you got robbed. You didn't get robbed. You you made
a deal that you're that you later regretted. But that's
a dispilimism. It's it's substituting a more negative connotation word

(54:57):
for this originally, you know, more wrecked term, and I
guess that would be kind of on the outskirts of hyperbole,
Like you're not going as far to say this was
highway robbery, but you're getting close. Yeah. But so there
are just like there are lots of euphemisms in political language,
there's some dysphemisms in it too. Like you might find
an establishment language, the government itself and and the bureaucracies

(55:20):
that exist, tend to speak in euphemisms to kind of
make everything a little a little uh smoothed over and
a little soothing. But meanwhile you might have sort of
agitators and radical factions tending to speak in dysphemisms, talking
about fairly normal things that you could express in a
fairly straightforward way in these just grandly negative terms yeah,

(55:45):
I think, especially in this Facebook age, everybody can think
of of strong examples of this. You know what, how
is say, the New York Times, uh explaining the situation?
And how is your your your uncle Jim explaining the situation?
Where how is the article that he's linking explaining it?
Very likely, I'd say the New York Times is probably
being a little euphemistic. I mean, even even their good writers,

(56:06):
they tend to be a little euphemistic, just not putting
things in very blunt, harsh terms. They might say, go
to the restroom. It's the going to the restroom of politics.
But there's plenty of dysphimism out there on the web.
But anyway, I want to come back to Orwell. So
the question is sort of, uh so Orwell had these
concerns about euphemisms, about their potential for enabling totalitarianism, and

(56:31):
they're they're the threat that they represented to a free
social democracy. So my question is, was Orwell's belief in
the totalitary and potential of vocabulary correct? In some ways?
I'm sort of inclined to agree with him because the
examples he gives very much makes sense to me. By
by using this sort of d natured, sanitized language to

(56:54):
talk about killing people and you know, doing things that
are very harsh and rule and have real bloody realities
and you know, down in the dirt of reality. I'm
sure it makes it easier for people to assent to
these things, to to sort of just go along with it.
We've we've found some nice words for it. But then again, um,

(57:16):
there are other strong arguments that sort of go against
the idea that vocabulary has this much power over our thinking.
And I guess we can maybe address these after a break.
Do you want to take a break. Let's take a
quick break and we come back. We'll talk about the
euphemism treadmill as well as the the war Fian view,
uh and the work of Stephen Pinker. So we were

(57:42):
talking about whether this totalitarian potential of vocabulary control is correct.
Do words really have this much power to control the
way we think? Does language determined thought? So as Ling
with Stephen Pinker has pointed out, the the or Willian
view is really kind of based in what's referred to
as the war Fian view. This is the work of

(58:04):
American linguists Benjamin Lee Wharf, no relation to the klingon
that different spell like I believe, also often known as
the sapiar wharf hypothesis. Yes, and uh, he to give
you a timeline for him, he was through one. That's
when he was alive. And uh yeah, so his his
argument and then therefore or Will's argument is yes, language,

(58:27):
Uh we we language is how we think. We think
in a language is the like the bare bones, language
is the operating for the operating system for the human brain. View,
But a lot of cognitive neuroscience now says, I don't
know if that view is correct. In fact, it's probably
not right now, I will say this, Uh, this is
an important fact to keep in mind about language is

(58:48):
that while spoken language comes to us naturally we're exposed
who are growing up. We simply absorbed the words that
fill our world multiple languages even Um, it's not the
same with written language. Written language takes work. We have
to trick our brains early on in order to avoid
backwards letters. The dB confusion because our brains inherently try
to decipher symbols and letters is three dimensional objects. I

(59:12):
never thought about that. Yeah, it's uh, I was reading
or listening to something about that recently. Uh. The point, however,
here is that that written language is kind of a lie.
So grammar rules, dictionaries, all these attempt to chain that
which is free, to solidify the inherently fluid nature of language. Uh.
Certainly humans have been saying the same things for a

(59:33):
very long time and will continue to say say the
same horrible things. But how we say them changes the
individual words, the cultural weight of those words. Um, and
I often think of think of this in terms of
weighted stones placed upon a sheet. Okay, like a sheet
that's held taught by into Yeah. Um. This is an
exercise that's frequently used to demonstrate how massive planetary objects

(59:56):
bend uh An exert gravitational forces. It's like the sheet
of space time and a rock is an object with
massy But instead of each stone being um, you know, planet,
each stone is a word. And unlike actual stones, and
unlike words as we might experience them in a dictionary,

(01:00:16):
the weights change. So this is where we get into
this idea that Stephen Pinker gives us, the idea of
the euphemism treadmill, the linguistic process by which euphemisms often
become taboo or offensive. So a euphemism is originally created
in order to avoid having to say the taboo or

(01:00:36):
offensive or uncomfortable thing. But then in time the euphemism
itself takes on the properties of that original word you
were trying to avoid. Yeah, have you ever played a
platform video game where your character has to jump onto
a pillar and once you stand on the pillar, it
begins to sink down the muck. You have to jump

(01:00:57):
to the next pillar and that starts doing the same thing.
And this is how you have to cross this entire
expanse of muck. You've got to keep moving. Yeah, that's
basically what's going on here with the euphemism treadmill. Polite language,
you had to keep moving, Pinker says. Quote. The euphemism
treadmill shows that concepts, not words, are in charge. Give
a concept a new name, and the name becomes colored

(01:01:18):
by the concept. The concept does not become freshened by
the name. So he gives examples of like the progression
of terminology for people with disabilities. Uh. So he starts
with the idea that crippled. Originally that was not an
offensive term. That was a polite term right to describe
somebody who had a disability, but it took on negative connotations.

(01:01:40):
People began to use it as a mean word to
say about people. So then that was moved on and
so so we no longer say that, and now we
have handicapped. But then that also eventually became perceived as
sort of like stale as a euphemism, I guess, And this,
I guess it started to take on some of the

(01:02:00):
negative connotations that crippled had acquired, and then moved on
to disabled, And so you've got thinking differently. Abled is
is more of the current version, Like we've moved on
again to another pillar in the right. So you can
so on one hand, just if you're looking from the outside,
you'd be like constantly moving words around. That seems kind
of ridiculous, but it's not when you consider how usage

(01:02:23):
of words happens and how language works. Yeah, I mean people,
if people are using a word with negative connotations, eventually
people who want to use that word with positive connotations
will want a different word. Yeah. Another great example of
this that's a cided is the use of idiot or
more on. These used to be neutral terms, right, They

(01:02:43):
weren't insults, right, but over time they became they became insults,
and now they are very much an insult and also
an idiot or moron. You're using an insult, you're not
using a neutral term. So we went from that too retarded,
which at for like, it feels weird to say it
because it now is the R word unless you're you know,
using it in very particular circumstances. Um. But but this

(01:03:06):
was this was neutral, and then it became an obscene term. Uh.
And then from here we went to mentally mentally challenged
and special. But even these I feel are degraded, uh
to a large degree, especially special, like to say someone special.
I can I can't think of any specific examples, but
I believe I've heard that used at least flippantly, if
not as an outright offense. Oh yeah, it is the

(01:03:28):
thing mean kids say. Now, like a mean kid wants
to they'll they'll call another kid special. Children if you're
out there listening, I don't know why children are listening to,
but you should not see the children. That's not very nice.
But yeah, again, it shows that as soon as so
you come up with. And I'd be interested to see
if somebody could create a a like time lag model

(01:03:50):
of this, like how long after a new non offensive
term is introduced, does it take before that term takes
on some pleasant connotations, people start using it as a
term of insult or abuse, and people who want to
speak politely feel like they need a new term. How
long does it generally take? Yeah? Another example of this,

(01:04:12):
I think would be in business. So we already talked
about the robust use of euthanisms in the business environment,
but also think about the buzzwords, right, those buzz words.
They gotta have buzz or they're not buzzwords, and buzzwords
inherently lose their buzz. So you know, everybody might be
talking about the I can't. I can't even think of

(01:04:34):
what the most recent one has been in our circles.
But to take an older one, like there was a
time when when innovation, innovation or storytelling, we are all
story storytelling is the one. I hate that these words
have been completely destroyed, but I believe they have. We
need we need we need new words and storytelling. Come on,
I love stories. Stories are like my favorite thing on earth.

(01:04:56):
But when I hear when I hear business leaders talking
about story to telling, I'm like, well, okay, we can't,
we can't describe it like that anymore. Yeah. Yeah, because it,
it ends up losing. It loses it's it's punch, It
loses its value in a sense, it loses its holiness.
Oh yeah, Yeah, it does lose its holiness. And it
also comes to stop referring to the thing it originally

(01:05:18):
referred to. Yeah, when it basically just means like any
talking in any talking or writing or or any kind
of communication can be storytelling. That's not storytelling. What is storytelling? Yeah, exactly. Now,
to come back to the euphemism treadmill real quick, I
also want to point out that I have seen it

(01:05:39):
argue that this is essentially, uh, this essentially lines up
with Gresham's law Gresham's law in economics, which states that
bad money drives out the good. This is a name
for Sir Thomas Gresham, the financial agent of Queen Elizabeth
the First and the idea here was that if some
coins in circulation are pure pure silver and others are
less pure, people they are going to spend the bad

(01:06:01):
coins if they're gonna keep the good ones for themselves.
So what do you know? Yeah, so that that makes
sense to me. Yeah, that that correlation with the euphemism treadmill.
But also you have a note here Robert about a
different kind of treadmill that I found interesting. Yeah, we've
already mentioned dispihemisms. There is a dispipanism treadmill as well.
And the example that that comes up is that sucks.

(01:06:26):
That sucks stems from a a more specific statement that
is also still in use, but a more offensive one.
You can say something sucks and it's you know, it's
in kids TV shows, but you know it's it's on
you know, whatever is on Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network during
the day when children are watching, but they're they're not
going to say what something is sucking. Yeah. When I

(01:06:48):
was a kid, I remember saying that sucks, thinking it
was a totally non offensive phrase, and having a teacher, Uh,
tell me, you know, if I had said that word,
it would have been like I said a word that
rhymes with it. That was what Uh. He was saying
that that that is a really really offensive term. But
it wasn't like that to me, and it was that

(01:07:10):
it had lost its dysphemistic qualities. Yeah, and it's one
of those two when you start peeling out apart, it's like,
why is that a stay? Why is that bad? I
don't know's we get, we get all our sexual politics
wrapped up in in in how you feel about the
latest ex Men movie. Another one I can think of
that we can edit this out if it's way more

(01:07:30):
offensive than I think. But I think one is the
British exploit British English expression bloody, which I think used
to be considered incredibly offensive, like a highly offensive expletive,
and now is an incredibly mild expletive that so much
so that it can appear in Harry Potter books and stuff. Yeah,

(01:07:50):
I wonder I've never looked into it, but I've often wondered, like,
to what extent is it still a little more offensive
in British circles? And it is an America because so
much American usage of it were just aping British usage
of it without really having a strong cultural understanding maybe
of what is being said. That's a good question. Again,

(01:08:11):
maybe we're yet again doing the cargo cult of euphemism. Yeah,
and you kind of get a guess into the like
the currency equivalences of of different insults or sorry, this
wouldn't be of euphemism is the cargo cult of explodives? Okay,
but let's come back to what we started talking about
with the idea of the Wharfian view and Orwell, so

(01:08:31):
we've got this this other argument from Pinker and from
you know, cognitive neuroscience and all this. Who says they say,
you know, the words don't really matter actually all that much. Um,
words don't have this power. But I I don't feel that.
I feel very strongly that Orwell was onto something. Yeah. Yeah,

(01:08:51):
and uh and actually found a paper that gets into
this a bit. It's very good as available is readily
available online. Two thousand and eight paper by UM by
Stanford's Daniel uh Casa Santo has published in the journal
Language Learning. Uh And the title is Who's Afraid of
the Big Bad Wharf Cross Linguistic differences in temporal language

(01:09:12):
and thought. So this is addressing the war Fian view
that language in some way determines or influences thought. Yeah,
and and it's interesting because he I'm not gonna say
he takes a middle of the road approach. It's definitely
more in Pinker's direction. He's not saying that the Warfian
view is valid completely, but that there that we can't

(01:09:33):
But but what are you saying is that we can't
completely dismiss the power of this this Wharfian uh relationship
between thoughts and words. Okay, so maybe that words don't
totally determine thoughts, but they have some kind of influencing relationship. Yes, exactly.
In fact, I'll read a just a quick quote from
this article to to really drive this home. Why should

(01:09:55):
we continue to do war Fian research? One possible reason
is that cataloging cross linguist to cognitive differences could be
a step toward charting the boundaries of human biological and
cultural diversity. If this is the goal, then the Warpian
effects most worth findings should be extreme instances in which
differences between languages produced radically different experiences of reality in

(01:10:17):
their speakers. Alternatively, cross linguistic cognitive differences could be tools
for investigating how thinking works, and in particular, for investigating
the role of experience and the acquisition and representation of knowledge.
If people who talk differently from correspondingly different mental representations
as a consequence, then mental representations must depend in part

(01:10:40):
on these aspects of linguistic experience. If discovering the origin
and structure of our mental representations is the goal, then
cross linguistic cognitive differences can be informative, even if they
are subtle, and even if their effects are largely unconscious,
whether or not they correspond to radical differences and speaks
conscious experiences of the world, Warpian effects can have profound

(01:11:05):
applications for the study of mental representation. Okay, so yeah,
he is taken. Maybe I would call that a middle view.
Even even if he's saying, like the Warfian hypothesis that
language determines thought is wrong, Uh, there's still influences that
are worth investigating. Yeah, yeah, well I would say that. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's the that's the point, like that, essentially

(01:11:26):
that language is still too powerful, it's too ubiquitous, it's
playing some sort of role. It's we just have to.
It's just to what extent and in which cases it's
most transformative. Interesting. Well, so I wanted to end by
thinking about a little more about what is the effect
of using euphemisms on our minds and on our culture,

(01:11:46):
Because when you come up with terms like, you know,
the euphemism treadmill, I'm not saying Pinker necessarily meant it
this way. I detect a little bit of amusement on
his part, but I'm not saying he definitely meant it
to be a term of derision. But you do get
this idea of a treadmill being a thing that's sort
of like useless cycle. Uh. And it's not necessarily useless

(01:12:09):
according to some thinkers. And I wanted to talk about
an essay UH done for aon magazine in twenty sixteen
by the Columbia University linguistics professor John mcwarder. And so
he starts by recognizing Pinker's concept of the euphemism treadmill,
and he gives a lot of really great examples of
these types of treadmills throughout history. Like we talked about.
He he talks about the evolution of the concept of

(01:12:32):
welfare UM welfare originally being like uh, you know, home
assistance and then welfare and then cash assistance, where each
time there's a new term, it sort of starts to
take on mean classist connotations, and then you need a
new term because it starts to be used as a

(01:12:53):
term of abuse. But for mcward this, he says, this
treadmill is not only inevitable but much good in in
his words, a healthy process necessary in view of the
eternal gulf between language and opinion. UH. And He says,
basically that thought changes more slowly than word usage, but
it eventually catches up. And this requires that in a

(01:13:17):
civilized society, people are going to frequently want to change
their euphemisms. It's an inevitable thing, and it reflects people's
desire to be polite and civilized toward one another, except
of course, on the Internet, where one does not have
to be polite or civil But that's that's kind of
that's a whole separate discussion right there. Right, of course,
you're always going to have people who want to defy.

(01:13:39):
But it near his conclusion, he says, quote, the euphemism treadmill, then,
is neither just a form of bureaucratese nor of identity politics.
It is a symptom of the fact that, however much
we would like it to be otherwise, it's easier to
change language than to change thought. In a sense, it's
like you're you're simply asking someone, look, I know you're

(01:14:01):
not going to stop being awful anytime soon, but if
you could at least use language that doesn't, you know,
wear your awfulness on your sleeve, and that would be great,
and maybe in time that outward decency will will bleed
through to some semblance of interdecency. Right, yeah, yeah, I
guess so. Like again, earlier, we talked about euphemisms being

(01:14:24):
a pain killer or also being a lubricant, and in
the sense it might be both of those things. Maybe
euphemisms or or finding a nicer new word for a
word that is taken on negative connotations. If that's what
a euphemism is, I guess um. It might not solve
the underlying problem. It might not fix people's attitudes, but

(01:14:45):
it might just be exactly what it seems like. It's
a lubricant, it's a pain killer. It makes interacting in
society easier, makes people get along a little bit better.
I can't help but think of the term African American.
The adoption of that term m H to replace various
other terms for uh, you know, black American citizens uh

(01:15:08):
has that you know it. It drives home the fact
that this is your fellow American, This is a this
is an American, and they have a particular origin, just
as you and your uh you know, Caucasian or or
Asian or what have you, Just as as your your
family has an origin somewhere else as well, Like they

(01:15:28):
are these individuals are are not that different from you.
So do you think that that term actually helps people
change their way of thinking? Or is it just this
just this lubricant that makes it easier to live in
a polite society and get along with each other. I
don't know, I guess I hope. I like to think
I would prefer to live in a world where the

(01:15:51):
language changes the way you think that in in in
in having to call an individual something more humanized, uh,
that eventually you will see them in more human terms.
But then again, I don't think any of us believe
that language alone is the sole operator here, like that
it has to has to come as part of a

(01:16:12):
larger suite of of social change instruments. So yeah, I
think i'd agree with that and with what mcwardour is saying.
But I guess the flip side of it is that
we're accepting some truth of what Orwell is saying, and
that many cases euphemisms are also going to corrupt clarity
of thought, make us sort of dull and irresolute, and

(01:16:33):
and make it harder for us to resist evil. And
so maybe maybe the case is not about whether euphemisms
are good or bad, but just that some euphemisms are
more worthy than others, I think so. Yeah. I mean,
words are powerful, and the right euphemisms are also powerful.
So all you can do is hope that you know,

(01:16:54):
whoever is in a position of power has the best
words at their disposal. And on that cheerful note, let's
let's end by just discussing a few favorite euphemisms. What
are some of yours, Joe, I love how you'll see
this a lot in Europe. The bathroom, which is itself
a euphemism, is the WC that has just been reduced

(01:17:19):
to a couple of letters, like not even water closet W.
I like that, like w C. Fields Um. I don't
know if it's quite a euphemism, but I have always
been fond of the I believe. I don't know if
he invented the phrase, but it certainly shows up in
Shakespeare's Othello making the Beast with two backs as a euphemism,

(01:17:44):
or or perhaps the opposite for sexual intercourse. I don't
know if that's a euphemism. That's fairly expressive. It's it's
ex expressive, but it all, but it definitely changes the
meaning of the thing. Like uh, I don't know, I
guess it comes down to would you are there cases
where you would say making the beasts with two backs
and it would be more polite than saying they were

(01:18:07):
having sexual intercourse, they were having sex. I don't think
that's the case. It's there must be another word for
whatever that type of thing is where you have a
word or a phrase that means the same thing as
something else, and it's not more polite, but it's just
like more I don't know, funnier, like making whoopie. I
think that would be an example, because whoopy is like whoopy,

(01:18:27):
it's it's fun. It's like if you were just okay,
here the three choices. Imagine you're in a roommate scenario
and you have to say, oh, I walked in on
my roommate, and um, he and his partner were making
the beast with two backs like that, or if you
were to say, well, I walked in on my my
roommate and he and his partner were making whoopie. Like

(01:18:48):
which of the two. But the two summoned vastly different images.
They're both highly polite, yes, incredibly generous. All right, Well,
I know everybody out there has their favorite. You've mis
ms and uh, and certainly some some cross cultural examples
we'd love to hear, so you should definitely reach out
to us about them. You can find us in a

(01:19:09):
number of places, but the best starting point is to
just go head on over to stuff to Blow your
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(01:19:32):
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(01:19:59):
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