Euphemism examples: 99 euphemisms and what they really mean

A euphemism is a mild or indirect word used in place of one that might sound harsh, rude or painful: “passed away” for died, “let go” for fired, “between jobs” for unemployed. People use euphemisms to be kind, to be polite and sometimes to hide what is really happening. The 99 below are grouped by subject, each with its plain meaning. Whether one is kind or evasive depends on who hears it and what they need to know.

The word came into English in the 1650s, from a Greek word for speaking with good omen: eu, “well,” and phēmē, “speech.” Euphemisms gather wherever a subject is frightening, embarrassing or costly to say plainly, which is why death, the body, money, work and war have so many.

Euphemisms for death and dying

A large group, because death is the subject people most want to approach gently.

1. Passed away, passed — died. Common in family obituaries and condolence cards.
2. Lost — “We lost her in March”: she died.
3. No longer with us — dead, or sometimes only gone from a company.
4. The departed — the person who has died.
5. At rest, at peace — dead, with a hint that the suffering is over.
6. Went to sleep — died. Said to children, and it can leave them afraid of sleep.
7. In a better place — dead, with a religious comfort attached.
8. Laid to rest — buried.
9. The late — “the late Mr. Okafor”: Mr. Okafor, who has died.
10. Shuffled off this mortal coil — died. From Hamlet's “To be, or not to be.”
11. Put to sleep, put down — a pet euthanized.
12. Final arrangements — funeral and burial plans.
13. Memorial park — a cemetery.
14. Loved one — the dead person, in funeral-home language.
15. Terminal living — dying. Part of the subtitle of William Lutz's book Doublespeak.

Illness, the body and the bathroom

Bodily functions and illness get euphemisms out of embarrassment, and the bathroom words keep changing (see why euphemisms wear out, below).

16. Under the weather — ill, usually not seriously.
17. A long illness — in obituaries, often cancer.
18. The big C — cancer.
19. Expecting — pregnant.
20. Full-figured, curvy — fat, in fashion and dating language.
21. Big-boned — overweight, said as if it were the skeleton's fault.
22. Thinning on top — going bald.
23. Had some work done — had cosmetic surgery.
24. Indisposed — unavailable because ill, or because in the bathroom.
25. Restroom, washroom — a public toilet.
26. Powder room — a small toilet for guests.
27. Bathroom — a toilet, even when there is no bath.
28. Use the facilities — use the toilet.
29. Answer the call of nature — urinate, usually outdoors.
30. Tired and emotional — drunk. A long-running joke in the British press.
31. Time of the month — a menstrual period.
32. Sleep with — have sex with. Sleeping is the one thing it doesn't mean.
33. STI — sexually transmitted infection. It replaced STD, which replaced VD (venereal disease).

Euphemisms about money and debt

Money euphemisms soften being poor, losing money or charging more, and the financial ones often come from companies rather than people.

34. Financially embarrassed — out of money.
35. Between paychecks — broke until payday.
36. Low-income — poor.
37. Comfortable — rich, said modestly.
38. Pre-owned — used, as in a pre-owned car.
39. Negative cash flow — more money going out than coming in.
40. Negative growth — shrinkage.
41. A correction — a fall in market prices.
42. Meaningful downturn in aggregate output — a recession, in a classic piece of doublespeak.
43. Revenue enhancement — a tax increase, from the title of Lutz's Doublespeak.
44. Belt-tightening — spending cuts, usually someone else's.
45. Convenience fee — an extra charge for paying the way the seller offers.
46. Creative accounting — misleading, sometimes illegal, bookkeeping.
47. Misappropriation of funds — theft of money in someone's care.
48. Restructure the debt — the borrower can't pay as agreed.
49. An investment — a large purchase you are trying to justify.

Euphemisms for work, jobs and layoffs

Workplace euphemisms cluster around the moment a job ends, and many of them are written by the department doing the ending.

50. Let go — fired.
51. Downsizing — laying off staff.
52. Rightsizing — laying off staff, described as a correction.
53. Restructuring — reorganizing, which usually includes layoffs.
54. Reduction in force — layoffs, in HR and government language.
55. Position eliminated — your job no longer exists, so neither does your employment.
56. Separated, terminated — fired, in a personnel file.
57. Workforce optimization — layoffs presented as efficiency.
58. Pursuing other opportunities — left the company, often not by choice.
59. Spending more time with family — resigned under pressure.
60. Early retirement — retirement offered as an alternative to being let go.
61. Between jobs — unemployed.
62. In transition — unemployed, or changing careers.
63. Not the right fit — rejected, without a reason given.
64. Overqualified — a polite reason not to hire, sometimes covering cost or age.
65. Performance improvement plan — a formal warning before dismissal.
66. Difficult exercise in labor relations — a strike.
67. Sanitation engineer — a garbage collector.

Euphemisms in war and the military

Military language needs exact terms, and it also has strong reasons to make killing sound procedural. Some of these are standard terms; others turn up mainly in briefings and press statements. The plain meaning comes after each dash.

68. Collateral damage — civilians killed or property destroyed in an attack on another target.
69. Friendly fire — being shot or bombed by your own side.
70. Neutralize — kill or destroy.
71. Take out — kill or destroy.
72. Servicing the target — bombing it.
73. Force package — a group of warplanes.
74. Boots on the ground — ground troops, also a synecdoche.
75. Assets — weapons, aircraft, ships or agents.
76. Kinetic action — an armed attack, as opposed to sanctions or cyber operations.
77. Police action — a war fought without a declaration of war. The term is best known from the Korean War.
78. Conflict — a war.
79. Strategic withdrawal — a retreat.

Euphemisms in politics and public life

Public life has its own soft words for lying, losing and saying no. Politicians of every party use them. The plain meaning comes after each dash.

80. Economical with the truth — misleading without quite lying. Robert Armstrong, the British Cabinet Secretary, made it famous at the 1986 Spycatcher trial in Australia, when he said a letter that left a false impression was “perhaps being economical with the truth.” The idea goes back to Edmund Burke.
81. Terminological inexactitude — a lie, in later use. Winston Churchill coined it in the House of Commons in 1906, arguing that “slavery” was too exact a word for the conditions of Chinese laborers in the Transvaal. Only later did it become a stand-in for “lie.”
82. Misspoke — said something false, presented as a slip of the tongue.
83. Mistakes were made — we made mistakes, without saying who.
84. Spin — presenting facts in the most favorable light, sometimes past the point of truth.
85. A frank exchange of views — an argument, in diplomatic language.
86. Regime change — overthrowing a foreign government.
87. Correctional facility — a prison.
88. Under review — not decided yet.
89. Ongoing discussions — no agreement yet.

Euphemisms for age

Age euphemisms try to make “old” sound like a reward or a style. Some, like “senior,” have become the standard polite term.

90. Senior citizen, senior — an older person, usually past retirement age.
91. Of a certain age — middle-aged or older, most often said of women.
92. Golden years — old age, especially retirement.
93. Getting on — growing old.
94. Young at heart — old, but energetic.
95. Mature — older, as in a mature applicant.
96. Distinguished — going gray, said of men more often than women.
97. Seasoned — experienced, which often means older.
98. Retirement community — housing for older people.
99. Assisted living — a residence where older people get daily care.

Euphemism vs dysphemism

A dysphemism is the opposite of a euphemism: a word chosen to sound harsher, cruder or more offensive than the plain one. The linguists Keith Allan and Kate Burridge called their 1991 book on the pair Euphemism and Dysphemism: Language Used as Shield and Weapon, and the subtitle sums it up. A euphemism shields the listener; a dysphemism attacks, or jokes.

Both are matters of connotation: the words point to the same thing and carry different feelings with them. The connotative words page has more of these ladders, and connotation vs denotation explains the difference.

Why euphemisms wear out

A euphemism works only while it is new. Once everyone knows what it stands for, it picks up the feeling of the word it replaced, and people reach for a newer one. The linguist Sharon Henderson Taylor described this cycle in 1974, and Steven Pinker named it the euphemism treadmill in a 1994 New York Times opinion piece.

The bathroom shows it best. “Toilet” was an 18th-century euphemism that replaced “house-of-office.” Over time “toilet” and “lavatory” came to name the act they were meant to dodge, and people moved on to “bathroom,” “washroom,” “restroom” and “powder room.” Medical terms do the same: “venereal disease” became “VD,” then “STD,” and is now usually “STI.”

Euphemism, doublespeak and spin

Most euphemisms are kind. Some are cover. George Orwell's essay “Politics and the English Language” (Horizon, April 1946) argued that political language is “designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” His examples include calling the bombing of defenseless villages pacification.

The word doublespeak is often credited to Orwell, but it does not appear in Nineteen Eighty-Four; it was built later from his “doublethink” and “Newspeak.” The language scholar William Lutz collected modern cases in Doublespeak, subtitled From “Revenue Enhancement” to “Terminal Living,” including “servicing the target” for bombing and “difficult exercise in labor relations” for a strike.

Put two soft phrases side by side. “We lost Dad on Sunday,” said to a neighbor, is tact: the listener knows exactly what happened, and the softness spares the speaker from saying the hardest word aloud. “Some roles are being realigned,” sent to three hundred employees, is evasion. Its readers are the people most affected, and they need to know whose job is going, when, and what happens to their pay. The difference is audience and stakes. When the listener already understands and has nothing to decide, softness is a kindness. When the listener has to act on the fact, softness that hides it costs them.

The test is the same for every side of every argument: after hearing the phrase, does the listener know what happened and who did it? If not, the softening has turned into concealment.

Euphemisms in dialogue and character

In fiction, the euphemisms a character uses are characterization. They show what someone is afraid of, what they are protecting and who they think they are talking to. A narrator who uses plain words beside a character who can't is one of the quietest ways to show rather than tell.

Euphemisms also mark period and class. A Victorian lady who is “indisposed,” a car dealer selling “pre-owned” stock and a teenager online who writes “unalive” instead of “kill” each speak for their time and place. For more on making dialogue reveal character, see how to write dialogue.

When to use a euphemism and when to cut it

• Condolences and family notices: soft words are kind and expected. Use the words the family uses. The obituary guide covers “died” versus “passed away.”
• News, reports and academic writing: use the plain word. “Died,” “fired,” “lost money.” A reader should never have to decode a fact.
• Workplace messages: be kind in tone and plain in content. Say what is happening, when, and what the person should do next.
• Fiction: give euphemisms to characters, and let the narrator stay plain unless the narrator is the one hiding something, as an unreliable narrator might.