Why do English speakers say 'passed away' or 'use the restroom' instead of speaking directly?
In this episode, we'll explore how euphemisms are used in English, the main categories of language where they are used, and how the British press uses euphemisms in a funny (and clever) way to avoid being sued.
[00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s part two of our three-part mini-series on the loose theme of “words and language”.
[00:00:31] In part one, as our first episode of 2026, we talked about words of the year.
[00:00:38] Next up, in part three, we are going to be talking about the unusual word “enshittification”, and today, in part two, we’ll talk about euphemisms.
[00:00:50] What are they, where do they come from, why do we use them, what do they tell us about the English language, what are some of the euphemisms you need to know, and what are some unusual euphemisms used by British newspapers to say what they are too afraid to print?
[00:01:09] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:14] An oft-repeated criticism of English speakers is that we don’t always say what we mean.
[00:01:22] On one level, it’s an odd criticism; language exists as a means of communication, with the primary purpose of allowing one person to understand what another person wants them to do or think.
[00:01:38] So why is it that English speakers don’t always say what they mean, that we disguise our language, that we choose a more complicated expression or phrase, when there is a perfectly good, common word that we could use instead?
[00:01:56] Why do we say “she is no longer with us”, or “she passed away”, or “he is with his family now”, when what we really mean, and what would be an easier thing to say, is “he or she is dead”?
[00:02:12] Well, this is the language of euphemism, the idea that we use a word or expression to replace another that might be uncomfortable or offensive.
[00:02:24] Euphemisms, as you might know, exist in almost every major language. Humans are humans, and there are certain subjects, no matter where you come from, that are deemed difficult to address using direct language.
[00:02:42] Some languages use them more than others; Japanese, for example, uses lots of euphemistic language, which is all tied to its cultural importance on harmony, politeness, and avoiding embarrassment.
[00:02:57] If you’ve spent time in Japan or have Japanese colleagues, you may have noticed that people often avoid saying a direct “no”; instead, they will often say something like “it would be a little difficult” or “I will think about it”.
[00:03:15] The meaning is the same —“no” —but in some contexts it would be considered impolite.
[00:03:23] It’s a similar thing in some parts of China.
[00:03:26] I remember teaching English in China one summer during university, along with a group of Americans. There were two Chinese ladies in charge of the group, and, to put it mildly, one of them didn’t do a particularly good job, and I’m 99% sure she was fired. One day, after a particular mishap, she just didn’t turn up for work.
[00:03:53] Instead of being told that she was fired, we were told that she was just feeling unwell.
[00:04:00] This was quite hard for many of the Americans to understand, as they just wanted a “straight”, honest answer, but they hadn’t understood that Chinese culture puts a big emphasis on “face”, and saying that she had been fired would have been disrespectful.
[00:04:21] German and other Nordic languages, as you may know, tend to be far more direct. There are still euphemisms, but they aren’t used nearly as regularly.
[00:04:33] And romance languages tend to be somewhere in the middle—French, Spanish, Italian —they all use euphemisms, but not quite to the same degree as we do in English.
[00:04:48] So, that brings us to English.
[00:04:51] English is actually one of the most euphemism-rich languages in the world, and especially in areas such as death, health, sex, money, and work.
[00:05:06] We’ll talk about some specific examples shortly, but the reason for this heavy use of euphemisms in English is partly historical, partly cultural, and partly psychological.
[00:05:22] And this is the case both in British and American English, but for different reasons.
[00:05:29] British culture has long favoured understatement and politeness.
[00:05:34] There’s a deep-rooted cultural discomfort with speaking too directly, especially about unpleasant topics. This is the case in personal conversations, conversations between one person and another, even between friends and family, but is perhaps even more so in professional contexts: workplaces, politics, the news, and so on.
[00:06:02] And Americans, despite their reputation for being outgoing and direct, well, they are also big fans of euphemisms.
[00:06:13] Remember, the United States, historically at least, was partly a nation of Puritans, people who set off from England in search of a purer, holier life, free from the sins and blasphemy going on back in Europe.
[00:06:32] And in some respects, Americans are even bigger users of euphemisms than Brits.
[00:06:39] Americans talk about using the “restroom” or “washroom” instead of saying the word toilet.
[00:06:47] In the UK, these expressions are less common, but you will still find people typically using euphemisms instead of saying “toilet”: you might hear someone saying “bathroom”, “lavatory”, or “loo” for short.
[00:07:04] It might well be a similar thing in your language: most romance languages talk about using some variant of the “bath”, and in Chinese, as you may know, you say that you are going to the “wash hands room”.
[00:07:20] It's even more removed in Japanese, where you can talk about going to “pick flowers”, and as you might know if you’ve been to Japan, sometimes this euphemism is taken to an extreme, “real-life” level, by having toilets that play bird noises or songs to mask the sound of what's actually going on in there.
[00:07:43] Now, I’m going to try to keep the focus on English here, to explore certain English euphemisms, but the reason I mention these other languages is to reinforce the point that most languages, with a few exceptions, just don’t like talking about certain things: bodily functions, death, sex and intelligence.
[00:08:07] So, let’s take these four categories one by one.
[00:08:11] We’ve already started on the bodily functions, so let me continue.
[00:08:16] Use the restroom, go to the bathroom, spend a penny, powder your nose, answer nature’s call, go to the little boys’ or little girls’ room, use the facilities; these are all somewhat commonly used euphemisms to mean “go to the toilet”.
[00:08:33] The list of expressions used is sort of endless, with all sorts of slang expressions you might hear, but these are some of the more common ones.
[00:08:44] Death is another topic that, perfectly understandably, most people find uncomfortable talking about, so we often use euphemisms in English when talking about death.
[00:08:56] Instead of saying “he died”, we say “he passed away”, “he is no longer with us”, “he departed this life”, “he’s at peace now”, or even “he’s in a better place”. In formal announcements, you might read “he succumbed to illness” or “she lost her battle with cancer”.
[00:09:19] You’ll notice that some of these euphemisms are religious in tone, with ideas of heaven, peace, and the afterlife, while others are simply gentler ways of delivering hard news. It can feel harsh or too abrupt to say someone “died”, so we soften it with more delicate language.
[00:09:43] Then we have sex, which is full of euphemisms, so full, in fact, that it’s often hard to keep track. Historically, in British English, people would talk of someone “lying” with someone else, or that two people “lay” together, which was a particularly polite and indirect way of saying that two people had sex.
[00:10:08] Interestingly enough, “lay” came back into common usage in the late 20th century, in a much less euphemistic way, in the passive form: “to get laid”, which is a sort of euphemism for sex, but not a particularly polite one.
[00:10:28] And of course, like most languages, there are hundreds, thousands of different ways people might talk about having sex, of varying levels of politeness, and with a thin line between what is a euphemism and what is slang.
[00:10:45] Expressions that are more euphemism than slang might be things like “sleep with”, “get with”, or even the more modern “Netflix and chill”.
[00:10:57] Now, each of these phrases carries slightly different connotations — some are more romantic, some more casual, some more humorous — but they all serve the same purpose: to talk about something considered private or taboo in a way that doesn’t feel too uncomfortable.
[00:11:18] And finally, we come to intelligence.
[00:11:22] In English, remarking on someone’s intelligence, or lack of it, isn’t a particularly nice thing to do; it would be quite offensive to say that someone is “stupid” or “dumb”.
[00:11:35] So, to try to convey this in a slightly less offensive way, there are euphemisms.
[00:11:43] You might hear someone say, “he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed”, or “she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer”. You might also hear “she’s a bit slow”, or “he’s a few cards short of a full deck”, or “not playing with a full deck”, “a little behind the curve”, or “not the brightest bulb in the box”.
[00:12:05] Sure, it still might not be a kind thing to use these expressions, but it is, perhaps, less unkind than saying it directly; these euphemisms create a kind of linguistic padding between the speaker and a perhaps uncomfortable truth.
[00:12:24] Now, there are a few other interesting elements of euphemism to talk about.
[00:12:30] The first is something called the “euphemism treadmill”, which is the idea that euphemisms change over time, and with time, they become less of a euphemism and just another, unacceptable way of saying what was originally intended.
[00:12:49] For example, if we go back to euphemisms for someone who is not intelligent, 100 years ago, you might have heard people talking about someone as an “idiot”, an “imbecile” or a “moron”, as a then-inoffensive way to address someone’s intelligence, or perceived lack of it.
[00:13:09] With time, those became used as slurs, offensive terms, so they were replaced by terms like someone being “retarded”.
[00:13:20] That too became a slur, was replaced by talking about someone having “special needs”, but this is now increasingly seen as offensive, and it’s preferable to talk about someone having an “intellectual disability”, which, if history is anything to go by, will come to be replaced in years to come.
[00:13:42] It’s a similar thing with race in the United States. In the 19th century, English used the term “negro”, coming from the Spanish word for black. Then came “coloured”, then “black”, then “African American”, then “person of colour”, and now the abbreviation “BIPOC” is more commonly used, meaning Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour.
[00:14:09] So, euphemisms change over time: what was once the preferred way to talk about something becomes offensive, and new euphemisms pop up to replace it.
[00:14:22] The final category I want to talk about is an unusual but funny one, and that’s euphemisms that are used by the British press to describe something they want the reader to understand, but don’t want to get into legal trouble for printing.
[00:14:39] The background to this is that the UK has very strict libel laws, meaning that if a newspaper prints something that accuses someone of having done something, they need to be able to prove it. You can’t just print “so and so did that”; they can accuse you of defamation, and if you can’t prove it’s true, they can sue you for a lot of money.
[00:15:07] And in 1957, The Spectator magazine published a story accusing three Labour politicians of being drunk at a conference. They might have looked drunk, but there was no way for the magazine to prove this, and it was successfully sued in court.
[00:15:29] So, given the frequency with which it happened, the British press started to come up with all manner of different euphemisms for expressing that someone was drunk.
[00:15:42] Most famously, people were described as “tired and emotional”. But there was also “worse for wear”, “under the weather”, “suffering from exhaustion”, “high spirited”, or “not quite himself”.
[00:16:00] In all these cases, the public knew what they meant, but if the newspapers were taken to court, they could say “hey, we didn’t mean drunk, we meant tired and emotional”.
[00:16:14] Similarly, newspapers might refer to someone’s “close friend”, “long-time friend”, or “travelling companion”, sometimes to mean an extra-marital lover, or a same-sex companion.
[00:16:29] Now, these are just a tiny selection of the rich tapestry of English-language euphemisms, and are meant to give you a small taste of how and why we use these expressions.
[00:16:42] And euphemisms are not fixed, people invent euphemisms all the time. They change, they evolve, and you might hear one you’ve never heard before because someone just invented it on the spot.
[00:16:56] So should you, as a non-native English speaker, use euphemisms?
[00:17:01] Of course, part of anyone’s fluency journey is learning how and when to use different registers of language and expressions. Learning every euphemism in English would be an impossible task, so there is little value in getting caught up in learning endless lists of euphemisms.
[00:17:19] But start to notice them, learn when native speakers use them, use them yourself in the same situations, and nobody will be able to accuse you of not being the sharpest knife in the drawer.
[00:17:34] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on euphemisms.
[00:17:39] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:17:43] How many of these euphemisms had you heard before? What are some other ones that you have heard, and how do you use euphemisms in your language?
[00:17:52] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:18:04] And, as a final reminder, this is part two of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “words”. In case you missed part one, it was on Words Of The Year, and next up, in our final part, we’ll be talking about a word that certainly isn’t a euphemism: enshittification.
[00:18:23] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:18:28] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s part two of our three-part mini-series on the loose theme of “words and language”.
[00:00:31] In part one, as our first episode of 2026, we talked about words of the year.
[00:00:38] Next up, in part three, we are going to be talking about the unusual word “enshittification”, and today, in part two, we’ll talk about euphemisms.
[00:00:50] What are they, where do they come from, why do we use them, what do they tell us about the English language, what are some of the euphemisms you need to know, and what are some unusual euphemisms used by British newspapers to say what they are too afraid to print?
[00:01:09] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:14] An oft-repeated criticism of English speakers is that we don’t always say what we mean.
[00:01:22] On one level, it’s an odd criticism; language exists as a means of communication, with the primary purpose of allowing one person to understand what another person wants them to do or think.
[00:01:38] So why is it that English speakers don’t always say what they mean, that we disguise our language, that we choose a more complicated expression or phrase, when there is a perfectly good, common word that we could use instead?
[00:01:56] Why do we say “she is no longer with us”, or “she passed away”, or “he is with his family now”, when what we really mean, and what would be an easier thing to say, is “he or she is dead”?
[00:02:12] Well, this is the language of euphemism, the idea that we use a word or expression to replace another that might be uncomfortable or offensive.
[00:02:24] Euphemisms, as you might know, exist in almost every major language. Humans are humans, and there are certain subjects, no matter where you come from, that are deemed difficult to address using direct language.
[00:02:42] Some languages use them more than others; Japanese, for example, uses lots of euphemistic language, which is all tied to its cultural importance on harmony, politeness, and avoiding embarrassment.
[00:02:57] If you’ve spent time in Japan or have Japanese colleagues, you may have noticed that people often avoid saying a direct “no”; instead, they will often say something like “it would be a little difficult” or “I will think about it”.
[00:03:15] The meaning is the same —“no” —but in some contexts it would be considered impolite.
[00:03:23] It’s a similar thing in some parts of China.
[00:03:26] I remember teaching English in China one summer during university, along with a group of Americans. There were two Chinese ladies in charge of the group, and, to put it mildly, one of them didn’t do a particularly good job, and I’m 99% sure she was fired. One day, after a particular mishap, she just didn’t turn up for work.
[00:03:53] Instead of being told that she was fired, we were told that she was just feeling unwell.
[00:04:00] This was quite hard for many of the Americans to understand, as they just wanted a “straight”, honest answer, but they hadn’t understood that Chinese culture puts a big emphasis on “face”, and saying that she had been fired would have been disrespectful.
[00:04:21] German and other Nordic languages, as you may know, tend to be far more direct. There are still euphemisms, but they aren’t used nearly as regularly.
[00:04:33] And romance languages tend to be somewhere in the middle—French, Spanish, Italian —they all use euphemisms, but not quite to the same degree as we do in English.
[00:04:48] So, that brings us to English.
[00:04:51] English is actually one of the most euphemism-rich languages in the world, and especially in areas such as death, health, sex, money, and work.
[00:05:06] We’ll talk about some specific examples shortly, but the reason for this heavy use of euphemisms in English is partly historical, partly cultural, and partly psychological.
[00:05:22] And this is the case both in British and American English, but for different reasons.
[00:05:29] British culture has long favoured understatement and politeness.
[00:05:34] There’s a deep-rooted cultural discomfort with speaking too directly, especially about unpleasant topics. This is the case in personal conversations, conversations between one person and another, even between friends and family, but is perhaps even more so in professional contexts: workplaces, politics, the news, and so on.
[00:06:02] And Americans, despite their reputation for being outgoing and direct, well, they are also big fans of euphemisms.
[00:06:13] Remember, the United States, historically at least, was partly a nation of Puritans, people who set off from England in search of a purer, holier life, free from the sins and blasphemy going on back in Europe.
[00:06:32] And in some respects, Americans are even bigger users of euphemisms than Brits.
[00:06:39] Americans talk about using the “restroom” or “washroom” instead of saying the word toilet.
[00:06:47] In the UK, these expressions are less common, but you will still find people typically using euphemisms instead of saying “toilet”: you might hear someone saying “bathroom”, “lavatory”, or “loo” for short.
[00:07:04] It might well be a similar thing in your language: most romance languages talk about using some variant of the “bath”, and in Chinese, as you may know, you say that you are going to the “wash hands room”.
[00:07:20] It's even more removed in Japanese, where you can talk about going to “pick flowers”, and as you might know if you’ve been to Japan, sometimes this euphemism is taken to an extreme, “real-life” level, by having toilets that play bird noises or songs to mask the sound of what's actually going on in there.
[00:07:43] Now, I’m going to try to keep the focus on English here, to explore certain English euphemisms, but the reason I mention these other languages is to reinforce the point that most languages, with a few exceptions, just don’t like talking about certain things: bodily functions, death, sex and intelligence.
[00:08:07] So, let’s take these four categories one by one.
[00:08:11] We’ve already started on the bodily functions, so let me continue.
[00:08:16] Use the restroom, go to the bathroom, spend a penny, powder your nose, answer nature’s call, go to the little boys’ or little girls’ room, use the facilities; these are all somewhat commonly used euphemisms to mean “go to the toilet”.
[00:08:33] The list of expressions used is sort of endless, with all sorts of slang expressions you might hear, but these are some of the more common ones.
[00:08:44] Death is another topic that, perfectly understandably, most people find uncomfortable talking about, so we often use euphemisms in English when talking about death.
[00:08:56] Instead of saying “he died”, we say “he passed away”, “he is no longer with us”, “he departed this life”, “he’s at peace now”, or even “he’s in a better place”. In formal announcements, you might read “he succumbed to illness” or “she lost her battle with cancer”.
[00:09:19] You’ll notice that some of these euphemisms are religious in tone, with ideas of heaven, peace, and the afterlife, while others are simply gentler ways of delivering hard news. It can feel harsh or too abrupt to say someone “died”, so we soften it with more delicate language.
[00:09:43] Then we have sex, which is full of euphemisms, so full, in fact, that it’s often hard to keep track. Historically, in British English, people would talk of someone “lying” with someone else, or that two people “lay” together, which was a particularly polite and indirect way of saying that two people had sex.
[00:10:08] Interestingly enough, “lay” came back into common usage in the late 20th century, in a much less euphemistic way, in the passive form: “to get laid”, which is a sort of euphemism for sex, but not a particularly polite one.
[00:10:28] And of course, like most languages, there are hundreds, thousands of different ways people might talk about having sex, of varying levels of politeness, and with a thin line between what is a euphemism and what is slang.
[00:10:45] Expressions that are more euphemism than slang might be things like “sleep with”, “get with”, or even the more modern “Netflix and chill”.
[00:10:57] Now, each of these phrases carries slightly different connotations — some are more romantic, some more casual, some more humorous — but they all serve the same purpose: to talk about something considered private or taboo in a way that doesn’t feel too uncomfortable.
[00:11:18] And finally, we come to intelligence.
[00:11:22] In English, remarking on someone’s intelligence, or lack of it, isn’t a particularly nice thing to do; it would be quite offensive to say that someone is “stupid” or “dumb”.
[00:11:35] So, to try to convey this in a slightly less offensive way, there are euphemisms.
[00:11:43] You might hear someone say, “he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed”, or “she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer”. You might also hear “she’s a bit slow”, or “he’s a few cards short of a full deck”, or “not playing with a full deck”, “a little behind the curve”, or “not the brightest bulb in the box”.
[00:12:05] Sure, it still might not be a kind thing to use these expressions, but it is, perhaps, less unkind than saying it directly; these euphemisms create a kind of linguistic padding between the speaker and a perhaps uncomfortable truth.
[00:12:24] Now, there are a few other interesting elements of euphemism to talk about.
[00:12:30] The first is something called the “euphemism treadmill”, which is the idea that euphemisms change over time, and with time, they become less of a euphemism and just another, unacceptable way of saying what was originally intended.
[00:12:49] For example, if we go back to euphemisms for someone who is not intelligent, 100 years ago, you might have heard people talking about someone as an “idiot”, an “imbecile” or a “moron”, as a then-inoffensive way to address someone’s intelligence, or perceived lack of it.
[00:13:09] With time, those became used as slurs, offensive terms, so they were replaced by terms like someone being “retarded”.
[00:13:20] That too became a slur, was replaced by talking about someone having “special needs”, but this is now increasingly seen as offensive, and it’s preferable to talk about someone having an “intellectual disability”, which, if history is anything to go by, will come to be replaced in years to come.
[00:13:42] It’s a similar thing with race in the United States. In the 19th century, English used the term “negro”, coming from the Spanish word for black. Then came “coloured”, then “black”, then “African American”, then “person of colour”, and now the abbreviation “BIPOC” is more commonly used, meaning Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour.
[00:14:09] So, euphemisms change over time: what was once the preferred way to talk about something becomes offensive, and new euphemisms pop up to replace it.
[00:14:22] The final category I want to talk about is an unusual but funny one, and that’s euphemisms that are used by the British press to describe something they want the reader to understand, but don’t want to get into legal trouble for printing.
[00:14:39] The background to this is that the UK has very strict libel laws, meaning that if a newspaper prints something that accuses someone of having done something, they need to be able to prove it. You can’t just print “so and so did that”; they can accuse you of defamation, and if you can’t prove it’s true, they can sue you for a lot of money.
[00:15:07] And in 1957, The Spectator magazine published a story accusing three Labour politicians of being drunk at a conference. They might have looked drunk, but there was no way for the magazine to prove this, and it was successfully sued in court.
[00:15:29] So, given the frequency with which it happened, the British press started to come up with all manner of different euphemisms for expressing that someone was drunk.
[00:15:42] Most famously, people were described as “tired and emotional”. But there was also “worse for wear”, “under the weather”, “suffering from exhaustion”, “high spirited”, or “not quite himself”.
[00:16:00] In all these cases, the public knew what they meant, but if the newspapers were taken to court, they could say “hey, we didn’t mean drunk, we meant tired and emotional”.
[00:16:14] Similarly, newspapers might refer to someone’s “close friend”, “long-time friend”, or “travelling companion”, sometimes to mean an extra-marital lover, or a same-sex companion.
[00:16:29] Now, these are just a tiny selection of the rich tapestry of English-language euphemisms, and are meant to give you a small taste of how and why we use these expressions.
[00:16:42] And euphemisms are not fixed, people invent euphemisms all the time. They change, they evolve, and you might hear one you’ve never heard before because someone just invented it on the spot.
[00:16:56] So should you, as a non-native English speaker, use euphemisms?
[00:17:01] Of course, part of anyone’s fluency journey is learning how and when to use different registers of language and expressions. Learning every euphemism in English would be an impossible task, so there is little value in getting caught up in learning endless lists of euphemisms.
[00:17:19] But start to notice them, learn when native speakers use them, use them yourself in the same situations, and nobody will be able to accuse you of not being the sharpest knife in the drawer.
[00:17:34] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on euphemisms.
[00:17:39] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:17:43] How many of these euphemisms had you heard before? What are some other ones that you have heard, and how do you use euphemisms in your language?
[00:17:52] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:18:04] And, as a final reminder, this is part two of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “words”. In case you missed part one, it was on Words Of The Year, and next up, in our final part, we’ll be talking about a word that certainly isn’t a euphemism: enshittification.
[00:18:23] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:18:28] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English, the show where you can listen to fascinating stories and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:21] I'm Alastair Budge, and today it’s part two of our three-part mini-series on the loose theme of “words and language”.
[00:00:31] In part one, as our first episode of 2026, we talked about words of the year.
[00:00:38] Next up, in part three, we are going to be talking about the unusual word “enshittification”, and today, in part two, we’ll talk about euphemisms.
[00:00:50] What are they, where do they come from, why do we use them, what do they tell us about the English language, what are some of the euphemisms you need to know, and what are some unusual euphemisms used by British newspapers to say what they are too afraid to print?
[00:01:09] So, let’s not waste a minute and get right into it.
[00:01:14] An oft-repeated criticism of English speakers is that we don’t always say what we mean.
[00:01:22] On one level, it’s an odd criticism; language exists as a means of communication, with the primary purpose of allowing one person to understand what another person wants them to do or think.
[00:01:38] So why is it that English speakers don’t always say what they mean, that we disguise our language, that we choose a more complicated expression or phrase, when there is a perfectly good, common word that we could use instead?
[00:01:56] Why do we say “she is no longer with us”, or “she passed away”, or “he is with his family now”, when what we really mean, and what would be an easier thing to say, is “he or she is dead”?
[00:02:12] Well, this is the language of euphemism, the idea that we use a word or expression to replace another that might be uncomfortable or offensive.
[00:02:24] Euphemisms, as you might know, exist in almost every major language. Humans are humans, and there are certain subjects, no matter where you come from, that are deemed difficult to address using direct language.
[00:02:42] Some languages use them more than others; Japanese, for example, uses lots of euphemistic language, which is all tied to its cultural importance on harmony, politeness, and avoiding embarrassment.
[00:02:57] If you’ve spent time in Japan or have Japanese colleagues, you may have noticed that people often avoid saying a direct “no”; instead, they will often say something like “it would be a little difficult” or “I will think about it”.
[00:03:15] The meaning is the same —“no” —but in some contexts it would be considered impolite.
[00:03:23] It’s a similar thing in some parts of China.
[00:03:26] I remember teaching English in China one summer during university, along with a group of Americans. There were two Chinese ladies in charge of the group, and, to put it mildly, one of them didn’t do a particularly good job, and I’m 99% sure she was fired. One day, after a particular mishap, she just didn’t turn up for work.
[00:03:53] Instead of being told that she was fired, we were told that she was just feeling unwell.
[00:04:00] This was quite hard for many of the Americans to understand, as they just wanted a “straight”, honest answer, but they hadn’t understood that Chinese culture puts a big emphasis on “face”, and saying that she had been fired would have been disrespectful.
[00:04:21] German and other Nordic languages, as you may know, tend to be far more direct. There are still euphemisms, but they aren’t used nearly as regularly.
[00:04:33] And romance languages tend to be somewhere in the middle—French, Spanish, Italian —they all use euphemisms, but not quite to the same degree as we do in English.
[00:04:48] So, that brings us to English.
[00:04:51] English is actually one of the most euphemism-rich languages in the world, and especially in areas such as death, health, sex, money, and work.
[00:05:06] We’ll talk about some specific examples shortly, but the reason for this heavy use of euphemisms in English is partly historical, partly cultural, and partly psychological.
[00:05:22] And this is the case both in British and American English, but for different reasons.
[00:05:29] British culture has long favoured understatement and politeness.
[00:05:34] There’s a deep-rooted cultural discomfort with speaking too directly, especially about unpleasant topics. This is the case in personal conversations, conversations between one person and another, even between friends and family, but is perhaps even more so in professional contexts: workplaces, politics, the news, and so on.
[00:06:02] And Americans, despite their reputation for being outgoing and direct, well, they are also big fans of euphemisms.
[00:06:13] Remember, the United States, historically at least, was partly a nation of Puritans, people who set off from England in search of a purer, holier life, free from the sins and blasphemy going on back in Europe.
[00:06:32] And in some respects, Americans are even bigger users of euphemisms than Brits.
[00:06:39] Americans talk about using the “restroom” or “washroom” instead of saying the word toilet.
[00:06:47] In the UK, these expressions are less common, but you will still find people typically using euphemisms instead of saying “toilet”: you might hear someone saying “bathroom”, “lavatory”, or “loo” for short.
[00:07:04] It might well be a similar thing in your language: most romance languages talk about using some variant of the “bath”, and in Chinese, as you may know, you say that you are going to the “wash hands room”.
[00:07:20] It's even more removed in Japanese, where you can talk about going to “pick flowers”, and as you might know if you’ve been to Japan, sometimes this euphemism is taken to an extreme, “real-life” level, by having toilets that play bird noises or songs to mask the sound of what's actually going on in there.
[00:07:43] Now, I’m going to try to keep the focus on English here, to explore certain English euphemisms, but the reason I mention these other languages is to reinforce the point that most languages, with a few exceptions, just don’t like talking about certain things: bodily functions, death, sex and intelligence.
[00:08:07] So, let’s take these four categories one by one.
[00:08:11] We’ve already started on the bodily functions, so let me continue.
[00:08:16] Use the restroom, go to the bathroom, spend a penny, powder your nose, answer nature’s call, go to the little boys’ or little girls’ room, use the facilities; these are all somewhat commonly used euphemisms to mean “go to the toilet”.
[00:08:33] The list of expressions used is sort of endless, with all sorts of slang expressions you might hear, but these are some of the more common ones.
[00:08:44] Death is another topic that, perfectly understandably, most people find uncomfortable talking about, so we often use euphemisms in English when talking about death.
[00:08:56] Instead of saying “he died”, we say “he passed away”, “he is no longer with us”, “he departed this life”, “he’s at peace now”, or even “he’s in a better place”. In formal announcements, you might read “he succumbed to illness” or “she lost her battle with cancer”.
[00:09:19] You’ll notice that some of these euphemisms are religious in tone, with ideas of heaven, peace, and the afterlife, while others are simply gentler ways of delivering hard news. It can feel harsh or too abrupt to say someone “died”, so we soften it with more delicate language.
[00:09:43] Then we have sex, which is full of euphemisms, so full, in fact, that it’s often hard to keep track. Historically, in British English, people would talk of someone “lying” with someone else, or that two people “lay” together, which was a particularly polite and indirect way of saying that two people had sex.
[00:10:08] Interestingly enough, “lay” came back into common usage in the late 20th century, in a much less euphemistic way, in the passive form: “to get laid”, which is a sort of euphemism for sex, but not a particularly polite one.
[00:10:28] And of course, like most languages, there are hundreds, thousands of different ways people might talk about having sex, of varying levels of politeness, and with a thin line between what is a euphemism and what is slang.
[00:10:45] Expressions that are more euphemism than slang might be things like “sleep with”, “get with”, or even the more modern “Netflix and chill”.
[00:10:57] Now, each of these phrases carries slightly different connotations — some are more romantic, some more casual, some more humorous — but they all serve the same purpose: to talk about something considered private or taboo in a way that doesn’t feel too uncomfortable.
[00:11:18] And finally, we come to intelligence.
[00:11:22] In English, remarking on someone’s intelligence, or lack of it, isn’t a particularly nice thing to do; it would be quite offensive to say that someone is “stupid” or “dumb”.
[00:11:35] So, to try to convey this in a slightly less offensive way, there are euphemisms.
[00:11:43] You might hear someone say, “he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed”, or “she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer”. You might also hear “she’s a bit slow”, or “he’s a few cards short of a full deck”, or “not playing with a full deck”, “a little behind the curve”, or “not the brightest bulb in the box”.
[00:12:05] Sure, it still might not be a kind thing to use these expressions, but it is, perhaps, less unkind than saying it directly; these euphemisms create a kind of linguistic padding between the speaker and a perhaps uncomfortable truth.
[00:12:24] Now, there are a few other interesting elements of euphemism to talk about.
[00:12:30] The first is something called the “euphemism treadmill”, which is the idea that euphemisms change over time, and with time, they become less of a euphemism and just another, unacceptable way of saying what was originally intended.
[00:12:49] For example, if we go back to euphemisms for someone who is not intelligent, 100 years ago, you might have heard people talking about someone as an “idiot”, an “imbecile” or a “moron”, as a then-inoffensive way to address someone’s intelligence, or perceived lack of it.
[00:13:09] With time, those became used as slurs, offensive terms, so they were replaced by terms like someone being “retarded”.
[00:13:20] That too became a slur, was replaced by talking about someone having “special needs”, but this is now increasingly seen as offensive, and it’s preferable to talk about someone having an “intellectual disability”, which, if history is anything to go by, will come to be replaced in years to come.
[00:13:42] It’s a similar thing with race in the United States. In the 19th century, English used the term “negro”, coming from the Spanish word for black. Then came “coloured”, then “black”, then “African American”, then “person of colour”, and now the abbreviation “BIPOC” is more commonly used, meaning Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour.
[00:14:09] So, euphemisms change over time: what was once the preferred way to talk about something becomes offensive, and new euphemisms pop up to replace it.
[00:14:22] The final category I want to talk about is an unusual but funny one, and that’s euphemisms that are used by the British press to describe something they want the reader to understand, but don’t want to get into legal trouble for printing.
[00:14:39] The background to this is that the UK has very strict libel laws, meaning that if a newspaper prints something that accuses someone of having done something, they need to be able to prove it. You can’t just print “so and so did that”; they can accuse you of defamation, and if you can’t prove it’s true, they can sue you for a lot of money.
[00:15:07] And in 1957, The Spectator magazine published a story accusing three Labour politicians of being drunk at a conference. They might have looked drunk, but there was no way for the magazine to prove this, and it was successfully sued in court.
[00:15:29] So, given the frequency with which it happened, the British press started to come up with all manner of different euphemisms for expressing that someone was drunk.
[00:15:42] Most famously, people were described as “tired and emotional”. But there was also “worse for wear”, “under the weather”, “suffering from exhaustion”, “high spirited”, or “not quite himself”.
[00:16:00] In all these cases, the public knew what they meant, but if the newspapers were taken to court, they could say “hey, we didn’t mean drunk, we meant tired and emotional”.
[00:16:14] Similarly, newspapers might refer to someone’s “close friend”, “long-time friend”, or “travelling companion”, sometimes to mean an extra-marital lover, or a same-sex companion.
[00:16:29] Now, these are just a tiny selection of the rich tapestry of English-language euphemisms, and are meant to give you a small taste of how and why we use these expressions.
[00:16:42] And euphemisms are not fixed, people invent euphemisms all the time. They change, they evolve, and you might hear one you’ve never heard before because someone just invented it on the spot.
[00:16:56] So should you, as a non-native English speaker, use euphemisms?
[00:17:01] Of course, part of anyone’s fluency journey is learning how and when to use different registers of language and expressions. Learning every euphemism in English would be an impossible task, so there is little value in getting caught up in learning endless lists of euphemisms.
[00:17:19] But start to notice them, learn when native speakers use them, use them yourself in the same situations, and nobody will be able to accuse you of not being the sharpest knife in the drawer.
[00:17:34] OK, then, that is it for today's episode on euphemisms.
[00:17:39] I hope it's been an interesting one and that you've learnt something new.
[00:17:43] How many of these euphemisms had you heard before? What are some other ones that you have heard, and how do you use euphemisms in your language?
[00:17:52] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started. You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:18:04] And, as a final reminder, this is part two of our three-part mini-series on the theme of “words”. In case you missed part one, it was on Words Of The Year, and next up, in our final part, we’ll be talking about a word that certainly isn’t a euphemism: enshittification.
[00:18:23] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds by Leonardo English.
[00:18:28] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
