Lady Astor: “Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I’d put poison in your tea.”
Winston: “Madam, if I were your husband … I’d drink it.”
I love wit, and that’s why I like euphemisms because they often show creative humor.
First, what is exactly euphemism? Is it some kind of a disease like rheumatism, hypothyroidism or anti-Semitism?
No no Prunella dear…
Like the Vatican Croatian Prayer Book, the dictionary that never leaves my bedside says this about it:
“A euphemism is a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.”
In a polite society clever euphemisms can blunt the impact of some coarse statements. It helps people to refer to unmentionable words or expressions without offending anybody. Often because they don’t understand the true meaning of what is being said.
I dislike crude people who cannot utter an eight-word sentence without using the f-word at least three times.
It betrays a pathetic lack of imagination or sophistication.
Euphemisms can help and I would be more forgiving of some intellectually challenged individuals if instead of making vulgar comments, they would use a clever way of expressing what is on their feeble mind.
Below are a bunch of euphemisms that I gleaned on the Internet. Some are mild and some are coarse, but when I come across any of them I cannot help but chuckle.
- Adult entertainer: prostitute
- Answer the call of nature: To satisfy the bodily urge to urinate or defecate
- Aurally challenged: hard of hearing
- Barking spider: An instance of audible flatulence; a fart
- Bat for the other team: to be homosexual
- Between jobs: unemployed
- Bio-break: A visit to the restroom
- Bought the farm: died
- Candy man: drug dealer
- Chicago typewriter: Thompson machine gun
- Creative accounting: Financial accounting practices that are not explicitly legal
- Cut the cheese: to flatulate, pass gas
- Dehire: to terminate the employment
- Discuss Uganda: to have sex
- Economical with the truth: not telling the whole truth
- Fall off a truck: to come into a person’s possession without having been paid for
- Five finger discount: shoplifting
- Hide the sausage: to have sex
- Influential person: underworld don
- Join the invisible choir: to die
- Lubrication payment: bribe, grease money
- Not the sharpest knife in the drawer: dimwitted
- Older adult: senior citizen
- Preloved: previously loved by somebody else
- Rapid unplanned disassembly: explosion
- See a man about a horse: to go missing for a short while without giving a real explanation.
- Shake hand with the unemployed: to urinate, to masturbate
- Smallest room in the house: the toilet
- Step on a duck: fart
- Vatican roulette: rhythm method for birth control
- Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: What The Fuck
Excuse me older adults, I have got to see a man about a horse.
Alain
How Russians cross a river…
Thanks to John Mengshol:
https://youtu.be/pMCrj02SUlA