Roots
Mind your language
Deepti

THE word euphemism owes its origin to the Greek words eu, meaning ‘well’, and pheme, meaning ‘speaking’. These Greek words when put together, mean ‘speaking good’ and this is exactly what an euphemism does; it speaks good by giving acceptable words for harsh or unacceptable ones. Euphemisms can be created in many ways but mostly, they are needed because some words tend to have an unpleasant association with ideas or concepts that are negative or unacceptable and a milder word is needed as a substitute.

One way of avoiding unpleasantness is to borrow a word from another language like the use of the Latin word halitosis in place of the English ‘bad breath’. Language users may also generalise the specific word. For instance, you may say ‘venereal disease’ in place of ‘syphilis’. Metaphors can also be employed as euphemisms, like the word ‘yellow’ in place of ‘cowardly’. The process can also be used in reverse and the words coined in this manner are termed ‘dysphemisms’.

These are words that are created when a negative or derogatory word is used instead of a neutral one, as, for instance, when a homosexual person is called a fairy.

‘Loo’ is one of the oldest euphemisms and traces its origin to the French gardez l’eau or ‘mind the dirty water’. The expression dates back to the time before the 18th century when chamber pots were emptied out of the window onto the street, after shouting the above warning. The expression surfaced in England as ‘gardyloo’ (also recorded in the novels by Lawrence Sterne) and later was shortened to the euphemism ‘loo’ for lavatory. The lavatory has in fact led to the creation of so many euphemisms that the neologism ‘loophism’ has been coined for all such words. The British society has coined numerous loophisms for visiting the toilet that range from ‘check the blackout’ to ‘inspect the plumbing’ to ‘drain the radiator’ to ‘empty the ashtrays’ to ‘go and look at Africa’ to ‘pump ship’ to ‘go and stand up’.