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euphemism
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  • Holmes denied that he and Julia had ever engaged each other physically, or that she had undergone "a criminal operation," a then-current euphemism for abortion.†   (source)
  • The medical literature on the causes of food poisoning is full of euphemisms and dry scientific terms: coliform levels, aerobic plate counts, sorbitol, MacConkey agar, and so on.†   (source)
  • If Misery Chastain had been a real person, he knew he might very well have been called upon 'to aid the police in their inquiries', as the euphemism went.†   (source)
  • Or any of those other stupid euphemisms.†   (source)
  • Timur's father had told them that they would have to "maneuver" through the infamously sluggish, ponderous Afghan bureaucracy—a euphemism for "find the right palms to grease."†   (source)
  • "Sounds to me like a euphemism for 'freaky cult.'†   (source)
  • Clary wondered if this was a euphemism for "murdered."†   (source)
  • The school was what could euphemistically be called a "teaching college."†   (source)
  • The ads were full of sunny euphemisms for the types of behavior I knew all too well.†   (source)
  • I imagined, of course, the bedside scene behind the curtain of that euphemism.†   (source)
  • Our first morning in Moscow, at breakfast—for him, a euphemism for coffee—he told me, "I'm still biologically deranged."†   (source)
  • Alex had been single for so long; she was practical, resolute, and set in her ways (oh, who was she kidding'those were all just euphemisms for what she really was: stubborn)-she would have guessed that this sudden attack on her privacy would be unnerving.†   (source)
  • One day, irritated by the mockery, Fernanda wanted to know what Amaranta was saying, and she did not use euphemisms in answering her.†   (source)
  • Enraged at Mukhtar's continued defiance and outspokenness, Musharraf ordered her kidnapped (or, as he euphemistically put it, brought to the capital).†   (source)
  • In conversation they papered over the grim realities of their jobs with cheery euphemisms.†   (source)
  • Don't pluck at wildflowers," I begged, using the euphemism for the types of women he might meet.†   (source)
  • I walked slowly down the hall to our Quiet Room, a euphemism for the place we chose to give bad news, a place with chairs, a table, a sofa, a big picture window, a cross on the wall, but no TV, no magazines, only a solid and soundproof door.†   (source)
  • By using euphemisms for death and murder?†   (source)
  • He could not look at the Diego and Rodriguez families and utter those euphemisms.†   (source)
  • Thus one ARPL group was concerned with electronic pacing of brain function (a euphemism for mind control); a second had prepared a study of biosynergics, the future possible combinations of man and machines implanted inside the body; still another was evaluating Project Ozma, the search for extraterrestrial life conducted in 1961-4.†   (source)
  • 'Top max' is the Washington euphemism for maximum-classified security, and where Langley is concerned that's the director of Central Intelligence.†   (source)
  • He had a reputation for being hot-tempered and tough, which was perhaps a euphemism for the fact that he employed methods that were not quite by the book.†   (source)
  • They'd had a stand-up fight in front of the whole office during the course of which Lucy had told Gates bluntly to do what Annie was trying to find a euphemism for in her memo.†   (source)
  • No one wants to talk about what happened—they just tiptoe around it or concoct euphemisms like 'unfortunate outcomes' and 'compromised assets.'†   (source)
  • GEORGE: (As MARTHA is not getting up) Martha, won't you show her where we keep the …. euphemism?†   (source)
  • Bad-mouthing Black English The inner cities of America—the term is often a euphemism for black ghettos—can look very different from one another.†   (source)
  • In the complex vernacular of military euphemism, it was an inescapable summons.†   (source)
  • Or was now pathetically languishing in a lunatic asylum, so that the use of the past tense is merely sorrowfully euphemistic?†   (source)
  • Ha, there is another euphemism: singing with the angels.   (source)
  • I ask you, why is it so hard to stay away from the euphemisms?   (source)
    euphemisms = words or phrases that serve as less harsh or less offensive ways of saying unpleasant things
  • "You will speak without euphemisms," said Dr. Meescham.   (source)
  • "Quit speaking euphemistically," she said.   (source)
    euphemistically = said in a manner that is less harsh or less offensive than stating something directly
  • "You are speaking euphemistically?" said Dr. Meescham.   (source)
  • We were well familiar with those euphemisms, having used them ourselves.†   (source)
  • He fell back on that most common writers'-workshop euphemism: 'It's got possibilities, all right.†   (source)
  • Then another was "removed" — a euphemism for disgrace.†   (source)
  • Finally, horses could break down, racing's euphemism for incurring leg injuries.†   (source)
  • Also it's too euphemistic by half: as they all know, his smell is strong enough, it just isn't the right kind.†   (source)
  • LOOK AT WHAT WE CALL 'FOREIGN POLICY': OUR 'FOREIGN POLICY' IS A EUPHEMISM FOR PUBLIC RELATIONS, AND OUR PUBLIC RELATIONS GET WORSE AND WORSE.†   (source)
  • From an ordinary man Jimmy would have found it brusque, even aggressive, but these people didn't go in for fancy language: they hadn't been taught evasion, euphemism, lily-gilding.†   (source)
  • Throughout their presentation of what they euphemistically termed "current conditions," the young anchorfolk kept their perky optimism, as they habitually do through every disaster imaginable.†   (source)
  • Brilliant euphemism.†   (source)
  • The rector was not gifted with language, and he was blind to doubt or worry in any form; perhaps the problem with his "eyesight" that had forced his early retirement from the airlines was really a euphemism for the blinding power of his total religious conversion—because Mr. Wiggin was fearless to an extent that would have made him an unsafe pilot, and to an extent that made him a madman as a preacher.†   (source)
  • "It's a euphemism."†   (source)
  • And that's a euphemism, by the way.†   (source)
  • There was a lot of traffic, and there were roadblocks, and he could hear the joyous singing of the militiamen, almost as terrible as the actual killing it euphemistically described.†   (source)
  • Previously the practice had been referred to as female circumcision, but that was considered euphemistic, so critics branded it female genital mutilation, or FGM.†   (source)
  • ; catty wompus, for something that doesn't fit or is out of line; dad blame it, dad bum it, dag nab it, euphemisms to avoid swearing; lurripin, tastier than finger-lie kin' good; all swole up, to mean irritated or proud and self-absorbed.†   (source)
  • International donors seemed content with the euphemism and continued sending development aid, crucial to the very existence of the government and, of course, a principal source of wealth for the few.†   (source)
  • Amaranta felt so uncomfortable with her defective diction and her habit of using euphemisms to designate everything that she would always speak gibberish in front of her.†   (source)
  • The latter weren't really oysters, that was just a euphemism for a part of the bull best left unmentioned.†   (source)
  • La Crise had become the common euphemism for the civil war, the euphemism favored by many Burundians when speaking to strangers, because if you used a more descriptive term you might reveal your ethnicity and which side you'd been on.†   (source)
  • In 1947 jobs were scarce, especially jobs in publishing, but a stroke of luck had landed me employment with one of the largest publishers of books, where I was made "junior editor"—a euphemism for manuscript reader.†   (source)
  • Few inmates of the camp were unaware of the reality behind these euphemisms or, having access to Hoss's communication, would not be able to make this free translation: "The Greek Jews being such a pathetic lot and ready to die anyway, we hope it is all right that they have been assigned to the death commando unit at the crematoriums, where they will handle the corpses and extract the gold from the teeth and feed bodies to the furnaces until they too, exhausted beyond recall, are ready…†   (source)
  • The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism.†   (source)
  • She knew that men patronized these women for purposes which no lady should mention—or, if she did mention them, in whispers and by indirection and euphemism.†   (source)
  • Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.†   (source)
  • She had a genteel refinement which shuddered at the facts of life, she looked upon the bodily functions as indecent, she had all sorts of euphemisms for common objects, she always chose an elaborate word as more becoming than a simple one: the brutality of these men was like a whip on her thin white shoulders, and she shuddered with voluptuous pain.†   (source)
  • The faces of the barmaidens had risen in colour, each having a pink flush on her cheek; their manners were still more vivacious than before—more abandoned, more excited, more sensuous, and they expressed their sentiments and desires less euphemistically, laughing in a lackadaisical tone, without reserve.†   (source)
  • M. Verdurin had been wiser than he knew in not taking his pipe out of his mouth, for Cottard, having occasion to leave the room for a moment, murmured a witty euphemism which he had recently acquired and repeated now whenever he had to go to the place in question: "I must just go and see the Duc d'Aumale for a minute," so drolly, that M. Verdurin's cough began all over again.†   (source)
  • She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place" that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village — appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short-cut from nothing to nothing.†   (source)
  • You're something of a coward, man, a phony, and if your cousin calls you a civilian, that's merely a very euphemistic way of putting it.†   (source)
  • In growing meekness Babbitt went on waiting till Hanson casually reappeared with a quart of gin—what is euphemistically known as a quart—in his disdainful long white hands.†   (source)
  • Philip laughed savagely as he thought of her gentility and the refinement with which she ate her food; she could not bear a coarse word, so far as her limited vocabulary reached she had a passion for euphemisms, and she scented indecency everywhere; she never spoke of trousers but referred to them as nether garments; she thought it slightly indelicate to blow her nose and did it in a deprecating way.†   (source)
  • As Burt would put it, mocking the euphemisms of educational jargon, I'm exceptional—a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of gifted and deprived (which used to mean bright and retarded) and as soon as exceptional begins to mean anything to anyone they'll change it.†   (source)
  • Such euphemistic written forms as /damphool/ and /damfino/ are also far more common in this country.†   (source)
  • [34] These were the palmy days of euphemism.†   (source)
  • C./, an abbreviation of the English /water-closet/, as a euphemism.†   (source)
  • To avoid the necessity he employs such euphemisms as /Little Mary/.†   (source)
  • The wits of London at once doubled his misery by adopting /Norfolk-Howard/ as a euphemism for /bed-bug/.†   (source)
  • So is /toilet/: we have even seen it as a euphemism for native terms that otherwise would be in daily use.†   (source)
  • It is regarded with such aversion by the English that even the lower orders often substitute /bleeding/ as a euphemism.†   (source)
  • /Stomach/, under the ban in England, was transformed, by some unfathomable magic, into a euphemism denoting the whole region from the nipples to the pelvic arch.†   (source)
  • / § 3 /Honorifics/—Among the honorifics and euphemisms in everyday use one finds many notable divergences between the two languages.†   (source)
  • The passage of the notorious Comstock Postal Act, in 1873, greatly stimulated the search for euphemisms.†   (source)
  • [Pg124] § 4 /Euphemisms and Forbidden Words/—But such euphemisms as /lady-clerk/ are, after all, much rarer in English than in American usage.†   (source)
  • [32] [Pg126] The Victorian era saw a great growth of absurd euphemisms in England, including /second wing/ for the leg of a fowl, but it was in America that the thing was carried farthest.†   (source)
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