Language

[tealin]

Earlier this week I had a conversation in which I used a colourful euphemism, and my conversee corrected me by supplanting it with the dull, blunt word it danced around. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I had always assumed that everyone knows what euphemisms stand for, otherwise they wouldn’t get used, or would be called symbolism or something fancy like that. When someone says ‘kicked the bucket,’ you know they don’t mean that someone literally walked up to a bucket an kicked it, you know that they expired, passed away, bit the dust, bought the farm, or otherwise died. (Please forgive me such a morbid example; euphemisms for death spring most readily to mind as there are a nearly unlimited supply.) I was also reminded of a point made by Daniel Handler in the interview to be found on the Bad Beginning audio book, in regards to the large words and sophisticated idioms found in the Snicket books:

It is really no fun to say ‘my, what a big truck’ when you can say ‘my, what a corpulent truck.’ The English language is filled with so many marvellous words that it seems a shame not to use the good ones. For instance, to say ‘the English language is filled with good words’ is not nearly as much fun as saying ‘the English language is filled with marvellous words.’ So I think Mr Snicket, like any author worth his salt, likes to use expressions like ‘worth his salt,’ rather than ‘like any author who is good.’

So, in the somewhat snarky spirit of clarity and straightforwardness, I now bring you the first in what might possibly be a series of ‘Cut the Crap and Get To It!’

The original:

What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.

And the honest truth:

Man is really something. Being smart makes him good. He can do a lot of things. The shape he is and the way he moves is good. Whether doing something or not, he’s impressive, good-looking, and better than the other animals. But what is this thing to me? Man doesn’t make me happy – and girls don’t either, you perverts.

Comments

[copperbadge.livejournal.com]

I think some people correct others when they use euphemisms out of a sense of overcoming-prudery -- ie, I always get annoyed when people say "he passed" instead of actually facing the idea that someone has died. Others use it to get a rise out of people -- replying to "they had a romantic interlude" with "you mean they fucked?" is a way of getting a rise out of people.

I don't think it's really, underneath, done out of any sort of motivation to kill the beauty or expressiveness of the English language -- rather, it's a social statement that screams "I'm not afraid to face death, sex, and other distasteful things" (methinks those who use it do protest too much).

Although it sounds like I'm making excuses for it, I'm actually on your side -- I believe that expression and euphemism has its place. I'm just....navel-gazing about why people sometimes do that, I guess. :)

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

Oh, your reasons listed for killing the poetry of language are perfectly valid, and I'm sure at least one of them applied to that conversation, but it just got me thinking, is all...

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that they protest too much- such screaming speaks of the desire to make polite society crude and blunt (for example, "go to the bathroom" is a euphamism, and it is not at all preferable that one declare instead exactly what one means to do in there). And if people think it is wrong to be hypocritical by, say, using delicate terms to describe an affair one is having, perhaps they would be better occupied worrying about how wrong it is to have an affair.

[twirlynoodle.livejournal.com]

My very favourite term used to excuse oneself to the water closet is 'I need to go to the euphemism.'

HAHAHA!

[(Anonymous)]

HAHAHAHAHAHA!
---DisneyBoy