Why we embrace euphemisms – and what they hide

On Jan. 16, eight minutes after lifting off from Boca Chica, Texas, a SpaceX Starship rocket broke up in space. Fortunately, there was no crew, just a test payload of mock satellites. While the first-stage booster returned to the launch tower, Starship turned into orange balls of light and trails of smoke. To avoid the debris, dozens of commercial flights had to change course, diverted to other airports or delay takeoff.

For anyone who collects euphemisms, the launch was a massive success. “We had an anomaly with the upper stage,” explained SpaceX communications manager Dan Huot. And this is how SpaceX described the incident on X: “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn.”

I suppose an explosion is an “anomaly” or a “rapid unscheduled assembly”. In the same way you might call a plane crash an “unscheduled landing” or a “controlled flight into terrain”.

That’s euphemisms for you – a way to soften the blow.

We all use them. Like saying “passed away” instead of died.

You ever text a friend “I’m running a little behind”? That’s a polite euphemism for “I know I was supposed to be there five minutes ago but I just pulled out of the driveway.”

Other euphemisms are respectful of sensitivities. We call a toilet a “restroom”, or talk about being “between jobs” when someone is looking for work. Not to mention the range of terms we’ve concocted to label various bodily functions and body parts.

In everyday conversations, I get it. Euphemisms serve a purpose. But in professional communications, what the fudge? (The euphemistic substitute for a preferred profanity.)

Worse than jargon

Let me be clear – something that euphemisms don’t always do well.

The damage doesn’t come so much from the world of advertising, where euphemisms are often a harmless shorthand. Like “pre-owned” or “pre-loved” to mean used. Or “faux leather” to describe a polyvinyl chloride couch. Or discount engineered flooring that offers “the warmth of natural wood”, i.e. laminate with a picture of wood.

The real estate business has mastered the dark art of euphemisms in home listings: “cozy” (good luck fitting your furniture), “close to transportation” (you can touch the passing train from your window), “authentic” (outdated), “character” (bizarre layout), and “fixer-upper” (the termites have almost finished eating all the wood).

All of that is rather benign. As are many workplace buzzwords like bandwidth, buy-in, circle back, deep dive, drill down, move the needle, pain point and pivot.

While I’m no fan of jargon, and try to avoid it in writing, the genuine harm comes from euphemisms whose sole intention is to confuse, mask or distort.

Lost in translation

Consider these instances where the meaning might be lost in translation, in order to downplay or downright deceive.

• In the corporate world, we see frequent announcements about “downsizing”, “rightsizing” and “head count management”. The terms are bloodless, and are often a cover for the organization’s failings. GM once closed five plants, tossing thousands of employees out of work, by saying the facilities would be “unallocated”.
• There have been reams of academic papers and articles looking at euphemisms related to climate change. Think of the range of connotations, and how different parties have applied them for various purposes, around terms such as “extreme weather”, “sustainability”, “net zero”, “carbon footprint” and “clean energy”. As others have noted, even such widely-accepted euphemisms as “natural capital” and “resources” can imply that the entire world just comprises assets to be mined for the sake of humans.
• Euphemistic language thrives in government too, with terms like “negative growth” (recession), “revenue shortfall” (no money) and “revenue enhancement” (more taxes). Meanwhile, politicians often talk about individuals as “taxpayers” and “clients” of public services, turning the idea of citizenry into a transactional relationship.
• Politicians also never lie. They just “misspoke”. Media outlets play along, using their own euphemisms for lie, like a politician “falsely claimed” or made a “misleading statement”. By the way, if a person running for office ever admits to what they euphemistically call a “youthful indiscretion”, you can bet a law or two was broken, and not when they were that young.
• Language used by military forces and intelligence agencies can be particularly insidious: “conflicts”, “hostilities” and “incursions” (wars); “enhanced interrogation” (torture); “neutralize” (kill); “collateral damage” (civilian deaths); “friendly fire” (killed by your own side); “surgical strikes” (bombings and assassinations); “regime change” (coup); and “detainees” (prisoners held indefinitely). In the U.S. in the 1980s, the Reagan administration developed an MX intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying 10 nuclear weapons. Its name? “Peacekeeper.”

Avoiding the mental image

George Orwell knew well the damage that euphemisms can cause. In his 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the people of his totalitarian state used a language called Newspeak. It was simple, limited and designed to inhibit critical thinking.

Noting how newspeak has come to mean deceptive jargon, Merriam-Webster now defines it as “propagandistic language marked by euphemism, circumlocution and the inversion of customary meanings.”

A few years prior, in 1946, Orwell published an essay called “Politics and the English Language”. It still resonates.

“Political language has to consist largely of euphemism…and sheer cloudy vagueness,” Orwell wrote.

He derided the sort of language where the person speaking “has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine…the appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved.”

Orwell described instances of defenceless villages bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out and their homes set on fire. “This is called pacification.” And jailing political opponents without a trial, or shooting them? “This is called elimination of unreliable elements.”

“Such phraseology,” he wrote, “is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.”

Don’t be ambiguous. Say what you mean. Call up those images. We need to see them.

A tool to mislead

Euphemisms don’t really simplify; they complicate.

A study in the journal Cognition noted how euphemisms can be effective in misleading the public, “not with falsehoods but rather the strategic use of language”. As the study stated, euphemisms make it easier to “sway the opinions of others in a preferred direction while avoiding many of the reputational costs associated with less subtle forms of linguistic manipulation (e.g. lying).”

The word euphemism comes from the Greek euphemismos, where the “eu” refers to good or well, and “pheme” to speech or utterance. Combine that, and euphemism means using an auspicious/favourable/agreeable word in place of a supposedly inauspicious/unpleasant/offensive one.

That’s how the term came together. It’s time to blow it apart. Maybe in a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

Stuart Foxman is a Toronto-based freelance writer, who helps clients' products, services, ideas and organizations to come alive. Connect with me here on LinkedIn, or check me out at foxmancommunications.com where I share these blogs too. More original posts coming regularly about communications, information, motivation, writing, branding, creativity, media, marketing, persuasion, messages, learning, etc.