Euphemism

Euphemism (pronounced yoo-fuh-miz-uhm)

(1) An agreeable or inoffensive word or phrase substituted for one potentially offensive, harsh or blunt, used often when referring to taboo, controversial or distasteful matters.

(2) The expression so substituted.

1656: From the Greek εὐφημισμός (euphēmismós) (use of a favorable word in place of an inauspicious one, superstitious avoidance of words of ill-omen during religious ceremonies), from εὐφημίζω (euphēmízō), from εὔφημος (eúphēmos & euphemizein (speak with fair words, use words of good omen).  Despite the impression conveyed by disapproving historians like Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) the Romans, like all the cultures of antiquity, used euphemisms but it does seem true the Athenians were the most delicate of all, so careful to avoid ill-omened words they called their prison “the chamber” and the executioner “the public man” and the Furies (Erinyes) they called “Eumenides” (the kindly ones or the Venerable Goddesses).  Euphemism's antonym is dysphemism, from the French dysphémisme, (modelled after euphémisme), the construct being dys-(from the Ancient Greek δυσ- (dus-), the prefix expressing the idea of difficulty, or bad status) + (eu)phemism.  An illustrative example would be “dirty, filthy face” but the idea can be extended to tautological forms such as “plotting, scheming Freemason”.  In the Ancient Greek, dysphemia translated as “ill language, words of ill omen”.  Although dysphēmē clearly was in (rare) used between 1873-1884, in English language texts, there’s no evidence of dysphemism appearing in print until 1927 when it was noted as being a “rediscovery”, based on the  from French formation dysphémisme.

The construct was εὖ (eû) (good; well) + φήμη (phḗmē) (a voice, a prophetic voice, rumor, talk) + -ismos (-ism).  The Greek phēmē was from φάναι (phánai) (to speak, say), from the primitive Indo-European root pha (to speak, tell, say).  The concept was well-known in Hellenic culture, the Ancient Greek aristeros (the better one) a euphemism for "the left (hand)".  In English, it was originally a rhetorical term, the broader sense of "choosing a less distasteful word or phrase than the one meant" is attested from 1793 and was in common use by the 1830s.  The most common derived form, the adverb euphemistically, dates from 1833.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Euphemism & euphemist are nouns, euphemistic & euphemistical are adjectives and euphemistically is an adverb; the noun plural is euphemisms.

The surviving defendants in the dock, International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 1945-1946.

Euphemisms are used to substitute an inoffensive word or phrase for one thought too offensive or hurtful, especially when the topic being discussed is concerned with religion, sex, death, or excreta.  Euphemisms are also used to disguise intent; the Nazi’s “Final Solution” was actually a programme of mass-murder or genocide as it would come to be called.  Even after the enormity of that became apparent during the first of the Nuremberg trials, one of the indicted Nazis attempted to find a euphemism for the euphemism, arguing it was somehow a substantive point that the English translation of Endlösung der Judenfrage as ”Final Solution to the Jewish Question” was misleading and the German should be rendered as “Total Solution to the Jewish Question”.  Like just about everyone else, in the circumstances, the judges failed to see any distinction.  It wasn’t the only euphemism the Nazis adopted: The phrase Sonderbehandlung (special treatment) refers to the ways and means of mass-murder and the transportation of victims to their places where they would be murdered was officially "re-settlement in the east".  Casually too, there was much that was euphemistic in the Third Reich.  After the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) in July 1944, Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda 1933-1945) managed finally to persuade the Führer things were bad and the time had come to convert the German economy to totaler Krieg (total war).  To his office staff, laconically he remarked: "It takes a bomb under his arse to make Hitler see reason" while the same sentiment euphemistically was noted in his diary in the phrase that the brush with death had "...produced clarity in his decisions."

Noted Euphemisms

Tired and emotional: The Rt Hon Sir John Kerr AK, GCMG, GCVO, KStJ, PC QC (1914–1991; Governor-General of Australia 1974-1977), Melbourne Cup, November 1977.

To "put to sleep" actually means to euthanize and death generally attracts many: "passed away", "bought the farm", "kicked the bucket", "departed", "lost", "gone", "pushing up daisies", "resting in peace", "met untimely demise", "meet their maker", "going to a better place", "six feet under", "sleeping with the fishes" & "eternal slumber".  Sex is also well covered including "friends with benefits", "roll in the hay" & "sleep with"; related forms being "bun in the oven" (pregnancy), "lady of the night" (prostitute), "affair" (adultery) & "long-time companion" (homosexual partner).  Rather than drunk, one might say "tired and emotional", "gave it a bit of a nudge" or "had one too many".  Politics provides a few, often words which describing lying without actually admitting it including "terminological inexactitudes", "economical with the truth" & that specialty of crooked Hillary Clinton: "misspeak".  Lindsay Lohan's lifestyle choices provided editors with some scope for the euphemistic, the terms applied to her including "controversial actress" or "troubled" (train-wreck), "tired & emotional" (affected by too much strong drink), "special friend" or "friendship" (a bit lesbionic) & "dehydrated" (affected by the use of unspecified substances).    Regarding urination, defecation and bodily functions in general, there are probably more euphemisms even than those covering death.

Students learning English are taught about euphemisms and the vital part they play in social interaction.  They are of course a feature of many languages but in English some of these sanitizations must seem mysterious and lacking any obvious connection with what is being referenced.  There are also exams and students may be asked both to provide a definition of “euphemism” and an example of use and a good instance of the latter is what to do when a situation really can be described only as “a clusterfuck” or even “a fucking clusterfuck” but circumstances demand a more “polite” word.  So, students might follow the lead of Australian Federal Court Judge Michael Lee (b 1965) in Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited [2024] FCA 369 who in his 420 page judgment declared the matter declared “an omnishambles”. The construct of that was the Latin omni(s) (all) + shambles, from the Middle English schamels (plural of schamel), from the Old English sċeamol & sċamul (bench, stool), from the Proto-West Germanic skamul & skamil (stool, bench), from the Vulgar Latin scamellum, from the Classical Latin scamillum (little bench, ridge), from scamnum (bench, ridge, breadth of a field).  In English, shambles enjoyed a number of meanings including “a scene of great disorder or ruin”, “a cluttered or disorganized mess”, “a scene of bloodshed, carnage or devastation” or (most evocatively), “a slaughterhouse”.  As one read the judgement one could see what the judge was drawn to the word although, in the quiet of his chambers, he may have been thinking “clusterfuck”.  Helpfully, one of the Rupert Murdoch's (b 1931) commentators on legal affairs, The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen (b 1966; by Barry Goldwater out of Ayn Rand), who had been one of the journalists most attentive to the case, told the word nerds (1) omnishambles dated from 2009 when it was coined for the BBC political satire The Thick Of It and (2) endured well enough to be named the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) 2021 WotY (Word of the Year).  The linguistic flourish was a hint of things to come in what was one of the more readable recent judgments.  If a student cites “omnishambles” as a euphemism for “clusterfuck”, a high mark is just about guaranteed.

Dysphemism

Dysphemism (pronounced dis-fuh-miz-uhm)

(1) The substitution of a harsh, disparaging, unpleasant or offensive word or phrase expression for something dignified, innocuous or neutral (ie the opposite of “euphemism”).

(2) A word or phrase so substituted (eg “shrink” for psychiatrist; “cancer stick” for cigarette; “ambulance chaser” for lawyer etc).

1873: The construct was dys- + (eu)phemism.  The Greek dysphemia meant “ill language, words of ill omen”, deconstructed simply as dys- (bad, abnormal, difficult) + phēmē (speech, voice, utterance, a speaking).  The dys- prefix was from New Latin dys- (used to convey the idea of being difficult, impaired, abnormal, or bad), from the Ancient Greek δυσ- (dus-) (hard, difficult, bad), from the Proto-Hellenic dus-.   It was cognate to the Proto-Germanic tuz- (hard, difficult, wrong, bad (ie the English "tore") and the Proto-Iranian duš- (bad).  Understandably, confusion with the separately derived prefix dis- is not uncommon.  The dis- prefix was from the Middle English dis-, from the Old French des from the Latin dis, from the proto-Italic dwis, from the primitive Indo-European dwís and cognate with the Ancient Greek δίς (dís) and the Sanskrit द्विस् (dvis).  It was applied variously as an intensifier of words with negative valence and to render the senses “incorrect”, “to fail (to)”, “not” & “against”.  In Modern English, the rules applying to the dis prefix vary and when attached to a verbal root, prefixes often change the first vowel (whether initial or preceded by a consonant/consonant cluster) of that verb. These phonological changes took place in Latin and usually do not apply to words created (as in Modern Latin) from Latin components since the language was classified as “dead”.  The combination of prefix and following vowel did not always yield the same change and these changes in vowels are not necessarily particular to being prefixed with dis (ie other prefixes sometimes cause the same vowel change (con; ex)).  Dysphemism & dysphemist are nouns, dysphemistic & dysphemistical are adjectives and dysphemistically is an adverb; the noun plural is dysphemisms.

Virgil pointing out the Erinyes (1890), engraving by Gustave Doré (1832–1883).

Dating from 1656, euphemism was from the Ancient Greek εὐφημισμός (euphēmismós) (use of a favorable word in place of an inauspicious one, superstitious avoidance of words of ill-omen during religious ceremonies), from εὐφημίζω (euphēmízō), from εὔφημος (eúphēmos & euphemizein (speak with fair words, use words of good omen)).  Despite the impression conveyed by disapproving historians like Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975) the Romans, like all the cultures of antiquity, used euphemisms but it does seem true the Athenians were the most delicate of all, so careful to avoid ill-omened words they called their prison “the chamber” and the executioner “the public man” while the hardly convivial Furies (Erinyes) they called Eumenides (the “kindly ones” or “Venerable Goddesses”).  The construct was εὖ (eû) (good; well) + φήμη (phḗmē) (a voice, a prophetic voice, rumor, talk) + -ismos (-ism).  The Greek phēmē was from φάναι (phánai) (to speak, say), from the primitive Indo-European root bha (to speak, tell, say).  The concept was well-known in Hellenic culture, the Ancient Greek aristeros (the better one) a euphemism for “the left (hand)”.  In English, it was originally a rhetorical term, the broader sense of “choosing a less distasteful word or phrase than the one meant” in use since at least 1793 and common by the 1830s.  The most common of the derived forms was the adverb euphemistically, documented since 1833 although the first use is uncertain.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Euphemism & euphemist are nouns, euphemistic & euphemistical are adjectives and euphemistically is an adverb; the noun plural is euphemisms.

Patterns of use: dysphemism vs euphemism.

Google Ngram (a quantitative and not qualitative measure): Because of the way Google harvests data for their Ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, Ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts (typically a scanner might misread an “f” for a long “s” or a “u” for an “n”) of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI (artificial intelligence) should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.

Whether in general use dysphemisms are more or less common than euphemisms can be debated although, impressionistically, it does seem likely the latter enjoyed a long history of prevailing in print, the reasons for that including politeness and fear, both of the stroke of the censor’s pen and the lawyer’s writ for defamation.  In the age when social media affords users (still) a degree of anonymity, the use of dysphemisms probably has increased but the word itself remains rare while “euphemism” and its derive forms continues to flourish.  The history also was interesting; although first in print between 1873-1884 (as the French formation dysphémisme (modelled after euphémisme)), not until 1927 was there a revival when, after French-Belgium philologist Dr Albert Carnoy’s (1878-1961) “rediscovery”, he granted it an entry in La Science du Mot, Traité de Sémantique (The Science of the Word: A Treatise on Semantics, 1927) although he was no fan, including in his definition: “Dysphemism is unpitying, brutal, mocking. It is also a reaction against pedantry, rigidity and pretentiousness, but also against nobility and dignity in language.”  Dr Carnoy was one of those now little-acknowledged toilers in the dusty archives of linguistics and his work on the etymology of Indo-European languages (especially Indo-Iranian) provided some of the framework still used today.

Daddy-daughter day: Lear and Goneril in the RSC's (Royal Shakespeare Company) 1953 production of King Lear.

One plausibly could say the euphemism is “essential” to civilized life while (perhaps generously), dysphemism is “desirable” for those wishing to “make a point”.  A dysphemism is the deliberate substitution of a harsh, offensive, contemptuous or otherwise negatively charged expression for a more neutral one and although common in everyday discourse, there are also specialized forms (political speech or literary devices) where, rather than being spur-of-the-moment “swap”, the forms often rehearsed and polished although often not original; like euphemisms, dysphemisms tend to be clichéd, indeed, both often tend on that quality for their effect.  In their own ways, the use of dysphemisms in politics and literature is both “idealized” and “exaggerated” while those heard in general conversation can tend to be less elegant or rhythmic.  William Shakespeare (1564–1616) of course knew how to gain effect by blending elegance with brutishness, that “light & dark” in the words (Act 2, scene 4) of the king in King Lear (circa 1605) to his daughter Goneril:

But yet thou art my flesh, my blood, my daughter,

Or, rather, a disease that’s in my flesh,

Which I must needs call mine. Thou art a boil,

A plague-sore or embossèd carbuncle

General Franco lies in state, Royal Palace Madrid, 21 November, 1975.  In his life, Franco attracted many dysphemisms and fifty years on from his death, that continues, the Franco-era remaining Spain's great fault-line.

As dysphemisms within a family go, that’s pretty extreme, labelling her a “boil”, “plague-sore” or “embossèd carbuncle” (ie a repulsive, diseased growth on his body) rather than the usual “I’m very disappointed in you” or even “you’re an ungrateful, wicked, bad daughter”.  Obviously a family with “issues” and one “unhappy in its own way”.  Nor did Shakespeare spare the feelings of the Jews.  In The Merchant of Venice (1598), old Shylock repeatedly is subjected to dysphemistic descriptions, most famously: “the devil” and “a misbeliever, cut-throat dog”.  The canine reference is very much cross-cultural; although “man’s best friend” and among the most popular domestic pets, “dog” is in many traditions a classic dysphemism.  As a literary sub-type and in political propaganda, there’s a long history of animals being an element in which the dysphemism is metaphorical dehumanisation.  Pig, dog, rat, worm, parasite, vermin, mouse, dinosaur, leech etc deployed for various effects, notable practitioners being the old Soviet Union (including its client states behind the Iron Curtain, the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) when the “communist” bit was still taken seriously and the DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea)), the latter really liking “dog”, sometimes with adjectival enhancement, often as a prelude to a sentence of execution.  There are many ways of using animals as points of comparison with the character of individuals that can at least verge on the complimentary (lion, tiger, shark etc) but “dog” is applied usually with contempt.  While it was Jeff Kennett (b 1948; premier of the Australian state of Victoria 1992-1999) who came “claim ownership” of the phrase: “He has all the attributes of a dog… except loyalty”, it’s believed to have earlier been by Andrew Peacock (1939–2021; leader of the Liberal Party of Australia 1983–1985 and 1989–1990) of Peter Costello (b 1957; treasurer of Australia 1996-2007) in one of those internecine squabbles that usually are more nasty (and thus amusing) than any invective directed at notional political opponents.  The use extends even to the dog's bark.  After the nationalist forces under Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1892-1975; Caudillo of Spain 1939-1975) prevailed in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939 and a very bloody business), his troops were told, were they to hear anyone speaking in the Basque or Catalan dialects, they were to be told: “Speak the language of the empire, don't bark like dogs.” 

A Fishmonger's Shop (1873), watercolor on paper by Frederick Walker (1840–1875).  The artist was a keen fisher (the known as a fisherman) and such was his attention to detail, a dozen-odd species have been identified.

Applying his techniques to the another Abrahamic faith, in Act 1, Scene 1 of Othello (1603), Shakespeare has the villainous Iago shout at the nobleman Brabantio, waking him to tell him his daughter Desdemona, has eloped with Othello, the Moor: “Even now, now, very now, an old black ram is tupping [a term from animal husbandry describing “livestock mating”] your white ewe.”  Now that might be listed as “Islamophobic”, joining much of the treatment of Shylock as “anti-Semitic” but Othello’s dysphemistic range extended to “sexism”, calling his own wife a “strumpet” (used by Shakespeare in the sense of “prostitute”) rather than addressing her by name.  Being English and “middle class”. Shakespeare was of course class-conscious and in Hamlet (circa 1600), he has the prince describe Polonius as: “a fishmonger”.  Fishmonger is of course an honorable profession but what Shakespeare wanted was a word Hamlet would choose as a means contemptuously to reduce Polonius to a supposedly vulgar, grasping tradesman and snobby Hamlet was in the habit of applying “degrading” labels to those he disliked.  The tradition endures: While in Berlin’s Spandau Prison serving the sentences they were lucky to receive from the IMT (International Military Tribunal) at the first Nuremberg Trial (1945-1946), Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) and Walther Funk (1890–1960; Nazi economics minister & central bank president) had a argument about a light bulb, Speer in an entry of 14 October, 1952 in his clandestine prison diary (Spandauer Tagebücher (Spandau: The Secret Diaries, 1975)) recording the exchange:

Big quarrel among all of us because of the lighting problem.  Everyone wants something different.  Violent discussion.  Funk backs off ten paces and berates all of us.  When he starts using vulgar epithets, I shout back: ‘You sound like a truck driver!’  He clears out.  The first scene of this sort in seven years and, worse yet, in the presence of a guard.”  Of course, in Speer’s internal logic there would be nothing incongruous in one convicted war criminal thinking it an insult to compare the language of another to that of “a truck driver”, that occupation definitely not one associated with polite middle-class society, the “worse yet” explained by “prison guards” being of the “truck driver class”.  Speer wouldn’t have needed an explanation of the choice of words by Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ (1812–1870) novella A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (now clipped usually to “A Christmas Carol” (1843)), the old curmudgeon’s contemptuous references to the poor: “Are there no prisons?; “Are there no workhouses?” the same sort of linguistic devaluation of human worth as his “truck driver” or “prison guard” being used not as neutral occupational descriptors but “categories of lesser intrinsic value”.

Nineteen Eighty-Four (first edition, 1949).  Modern re-prints have tended to use the numeric 1984 for the title.

Scrooge at least became a reformed character although, despite his decades of assiduous self-promotion, it seems doubtful Speer ever much changed his fundamental view of humanity and it may be he’d have seen the logic in the famous dysphemistic strategy for “preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick” suggested by the Anglo-Irish satirist & Anglican cleric Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) in A Modest proposal (1729).  Swift’s essay wholly was satirical and gained its effect from being written in ostensibly polite language, echoed later by the style in which Nazi-era documents (some from ministries headed by Speer) detailed appalling crimes in euphemism-laden texts that on surface analysis seemed innocuous bureaucratese.  Well acquainted with bureaucratese and the way language could be weaponized, in both Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), George Orwell (1903-1950) demonstrated the “sword & shield” potential of dysphemism & euphemism, one of his warnings the way “political language” could be used to reduce individuals to degraded categories, something later explored by those developing labelling theory.  That of course wasn’t new, the Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad (pen name of Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 1857–1924) in his novella Heart of Darkness (1899) used the brutish dysphemisms European colonial administrators applied casually to native Africans, reducing them to the status of animals, objects, or undifferentiated masses, again a technique that would have been familiar to Speer because an essential underpinning the whole Nazi racialist project was the need to have some people classified as “sub-human” and thus able without moral scruples to be “processed” as “livestock” or “beasts of burden”.  Conrad employed dysphemisms to expose the dehumanising psychology of colonialism as Orwell would later warn of the similar phenomenon in authoritarian states.

The Mean Girls Burn Book, a repository of the dysphemistic.

As might be expected, the film Mean Girls (2004) is a rich source of dysphemism, much of humor depending on deliberately derogatory or dehumanising language but, as a linguistic case-study, it’s of use also because, in the strict technical sense, not every “insult” is necessarily a dysphemism.  “Plastic” (and especially the collective “the Plastics”) certainly is dysphemistic and a classic example in that it takes a “neutral” word (using one of its two, well-known, “technical meanings”) and applies it to the clique of those individuals judged “artificial, fake, superficial etc”.  For deconstructionists, there’s also the contrast of the mix & match of dysphemism & euphemism in the text, indirect language of both flavours used when discussing sex, weight, menstruation etc although the labels applied to people tend to the former.  The script does illustrate the way dysphemism, pejoration, slur, insult, profanity, taboo language, and metaphorical dehumanisation can in some cases be distinguished while in others there’s obvious cross-categorization; in Mean Girls, much of the work done by language happens “at the margins” and the “Burn Book” in a way “institutionalises dysphemistic”, “burn” itself slang for an intentionally cutting insult.

At its most simple and most obvious, the dysphemism is merely the substitution of a harsh, disparaging, unpleasant or offensive word or phrase expression for something dignified, innocuous or neutral (ie the opposite of “euphemism”) and for centuries that’s been embedded in slang and used by authors, comedians and such as a source of bawdy humor, Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) in Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) clearly enjoying having his readers wallow in deliberately coarse or degrading terminology, notably for sexual behavior and bodily functions.  In that sense, it was “vulgarisation” a sub-set of dysphemism and perhaps (certainly in oral use) the most frequently practiced.  Dysphemism however is not of necessity something vulgar or insulting and can be a kind of “defense mechanism”; a way of “making light” of something disturbing or tragic.  In that vein, while “she died” is neutral, “she passed on” is euphemistic and “she kicked the bucket” is dysphemistic.  For those who wish to descend further into irrelevance there’s “she croaked”, “she karked it”, “she bit the dust” or “she fell of the perch”.

Leading Tory (Conservative Party) “Dry” Lord Norman Tebbit (1931–2025) on the cover of Private Eye magazine, 16 May, 1986.  The duel of the Tories' “Wets vs Dry” was something like “Dysphemisms at several dozen paces”.

Dysphemisms can also be adopted by those they were originally intended to disparage, notably in the 1980s by the “drys” (those on the nominal right of politics who would later be tagged “economic rationalists).  The “drys” liked the label and ran with it although their retribution (dubbing their opponents the “wets”) wasn’t embraced by them but at least they never got to be called “economic irrationalists” so there was that.   “Police officer” is a neutral descriptor (“law-enforcement professional” less a euphemism than a broader category of those employed on one side (although then can be fraying at the edges) of the crime business) while “cop” often was intended to disparage but in many places the “cops” came to like it, making it part of their slang, even using it in advertising and official documents.  In semiotics (the study of connotation & denotation of meaning in signs (words, marks, images etc)), the crucial aspect in whether a dysphemism remains a disparagement or emerges as something neutral or even embraced as at least quasi-affectionate is whether the pattern of popular use maintains or dissipates the originally deliberate “negative semantic loading”.  The verb "to cop" was from the Old French caper, from the Latin capere (to take or seize (the same root as capture)) and was known in English by the early 1700s.  By the middle of the nineteenth century, the noun “copper” was in common use to describe police constables and it survived and spread better than “peeler” or “bobby”, both a reference to Sir Robert Peel (1788–1850; Prime Minister of the UK 1834–1835 & 1841–1846) who, as Home Secretary (minister of the interior), introduced the Metropolitan Police Act (1829) establishing a police force for much of London and the surrounding areas).  The tales that “cop” was derived from “Constable on Patrol” (C.O.P.) or the copper buttons & badges part of the uniform were fanciful folk etymology; they were fake news. 

Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism (2017) by Tiago Saraiva (b 1972).

The stronger dysphemism “pig” has however always been disparaging and began not as a late twentieth century clipping of “fascist pig” but more than 150 years earlier, an entry appearing in Francis Grose’s (circa 1730-1791) Lexicon Balatronicum, (a dictionary of London slang).  According to Grouse, “pig” in this context was a clipping of “China Street pig”, underworld slang for a “Bow Street Officer” (the “Bow Street Runners” London's first professional, organized police force).  The porcine comparison was based on the criminal class’s view of policemen being as “greedy, dirty and unpleasant” as pigs although the reference was less to personal hygiene than the officers’ (probably not wholly undeserved) reputation for corruption and fondness for seizing for themselves a thief’s illicit loot or wallets.  Historians note also the “snout allusion”: the early undercover detectives and patrol officers characterized as “sniffing out crime”, much as a pig uses its snout to “root around” in search of something tasty.  In the UK, “copper”, “bobby” and “peeler” all supplanted “pig” but there was a revival of the latter in the US during the 1960s as the counter-culture, Vietnam War protesters, the Weather Underground and others became the police’s “usual suspects”.  This time there really was a connection with “fascist pig” and the Black Panther Party lent the use much cultural traction by prominent placement in newsletters, speeches and, most graphically, political cartoons depicting “police brutality”.  Media management wasn’t then the art it would become and attempts by some police forces to reclaim the word with “P.I.G.” campaigns (the initialism for “Pride, Integrity, Guts”) were greeted with derision so they stuck to being “cops”.  Not all looked as unfavourably upon pigs as the London underworld of old.  The quote: “I am fond of pigs.  Dogs look up to us.  Cats look down on us.  Pigs treat us as equals.” supposedly was said by Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) but like many memorable quips attributed to him, it’s unverified.  Always sentimental about animals (though one of England’s more voracious carnivores), it’s certainly something he might have said.

Banjax

Banjax (pronounced ban-jaks)

(1) In UK (originally Irish) slang, a mess or undesirable situation created through incompetence

(2) In UK (originally Irish) slang, to ruin, incapacitate or break; to batter or destroy (a person or thing).

Early 1900s (contested): Apparently a regional (Dublin) slang of unknown origin but the most supported theory is it being a euphemism for “ballocks” (a variant of “bollocks” (in this context meaning “rubbish; nonsense”, but associated also with “the tentacles”, the latter the origin of the vulgarity which demands a euphemism.  The alternative spellings were banjack, bandjax, such variations not unusual in the evolution of slang where so much transmission is oral.  Banjax is a noun & verb and banjaxing & banjaxed are verbs; the noun plural is banjaxes or banjaxs.  The suggestion a banjax was a “type of electric banjo” was wholly facetious.

Although one dictionary of Hiberno-English (the collective name for the dialects of English native to the island of Ireland (known also as Irish English (IrE) & (more confusingly), Anglo-Irish), The Irish Use of English (2006) compiled by Irish lexicographer Professor Terence Dolan (1943–2019) offers two possible sources (1) a possible combination of “bang” & “smash” and (2) a Corkese (a regional dialect of English native to County Cork) word meaning “for public lavatory for females”.  There is support for the link with Corkese because in that dialect the vowel sounds in Corkese significantly can differ from other varieties of IrE and the “a” in “cat” can sound more like “cot” to non-locals which would make “banjax” sound closer to “ballocks” and as early as the 1920s the idea of it as a euphemism for “ballocks” had appeared (described in some cases as a “semi-euphemism”).  Whether or not it’s in any way related to the later meaning isn’t known but there’s a document from 1899 listing “Banjax” as the name of a racehorse belong to one Mr Sweeney; the names of race horses are among the more random studies in language so any link is speculative but the meaning was obvious by September 1909 in the report of court proceedings in the Dublin Daily Express, where the transcript recorded: “In the case of a Nationalist claim when the witness entered the box the Unionist agent said that this was a complete ‘banjax’ (laughter)."

It appears also in Act 3 of the play Juno and the Paycock (1924) by the Irish dramatist and memoirist Seán O'Casey (1880–1964): “I’m tellin’ you the scholar, Bentham, made a banjax o’ the Will.”  O’Casey was of the socialist left and regarded as the “first Irish playwright of note” to focus on the working classes Dublin, including them as fully-developed and explored characters rather than as caricatures or political symbols.  He wasn’t exactly a proto-Angry Young Man (said by some to a tautology in the case of Irish youth) but his Irishness, while genuine, was “tuned”: in 1907 he Gaelicised his name from John Casey to Seán Ó Cathasaigh.  It must have been known as a popular oral form because it’s in a number of examples of Irish literature including A Nest of Simple Folk by Seán Ó Faoláin (1900–1991): “For two streets Johno kept complaining to the driver that it was a nice banjax if a fellow…”  The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) noted the certain literary respectability banjax gained when Nobel Prize laureate (Literature, 1969) Samuel Beckett (1906-1989)) included it in a passage in 1956.

Banjaxed cars in California: 2005 Mercedes-Benz SL 65 (R230) AMG roadster (2005, left) and 2012 Porsche 911 (997) Carrera S (2012, right).  Lindsay Lohan had some really bad luck while driving black, German cars.

Not for the first time, word nerds can thank the Daily Mail for enriching the current vernacular for in September 2024 it began publishing extracts from Unleashed, the memoir of Boris Johnson (b 1964; UK prime-minister 2019-2022) to be released on 10 October.  Being the Daily Mail, the fragments chosen as extracts are perhaps not representative of the whole but they’re doubtlessly the best click-bait, including discussions in Number 10 about the British Army invading Continental Europe (and thus NATO territory) for the first time since the D-Day landings (6 June, 1944), observations about the “long and pointy black” nostrils of his predecessor, a non-apology dismissing the “Partygate” scandal as much ado about, if not quite nothing, certainly not a great deal, his treacherous colleagues and, of course, something about Meghan & Harry.  The probably brief revival of banjax came in the account of his stay in hospital under the care of the National Health Service (NHS) after testing positive in 2020 in the early stages of what would later be named the COVID-19 pandemic.  Fond of quoting the classics, Mr Johnson recalled the plague of Athens (430 BC) which killed perhaps a third of the population but resorted also to the earthy, detailing his declining health as he was “banjaxed” by the virus, descending from his usual “bullish” and “rubicund” state to within days having a face “the colour of mayonnaise”.

Boris Johnson (right) with prize bull (left), Darnford Farm, Banchory, Scotland September, 2019.

Best though was his vivid pen-portrait of Sir Keir Starmer (b 1962; prime-minister of the UK since 2024), his “irritable face” during a COVID-19–era debate in the House of Commons said to be “like a bullock having a thermometer unexpectedly shoved in its rectum”.  That was an allusion to a prime-ministerial barb accusing the then leader of the opposition of being unable to say schools were safe to re-open because it would “go against his masters in the teaching unions”.  “A great ox has stood on his tongue” he told the speaker.  Although the Daily Mail didn’t bother, the use of a simile in which a politician is compared to a bullock does need some footnoting for an international audience.  In the UK, a bullock is “a castrated male bovine animal of any age” while in US English it’s “a young bull (an uncastrated male bovine animal)” and in other places of the old British Empire (Australia, India & New Zealand) it’s an “ox, an adult male bovine used for draught (usually but not always castrated)”.  One can see how these regional differences might make a difference to someone reading Unleashed.

Cyrus Eaton (1883–1979, centre), Mr Eaton’s prize bull (left) and Harry Truman (1884–1972; POTUS 1945-1953, right), Cleveland, Ohio, June 1955.

Pleasingly, it’s not the first time one politician has used the imagery of another having a medical device “shoved” in his rectum.  Harry Truman in 1951 wrote to an old friend expressing the wish he could shove a trocar (a sharp-pointed hollow cylindrical instrument (enclosed in a cannula), used (1) in medicine for removing fluid from bodily cavities and (2) by vets and ranchers to “relieve intestinal gas” in cattle) up some of the “stuffed shirts” in Congress: “You know what happens when you stick one of them in an old bull that’s clovered [ie suffering excessive internal gas as a result of eating too much clover].  “The report is loud and the wind whistles – but the bull usually comes down to size and recovers.”

President Truman liked “windy” as a way of describing talkative politicians, applying it to the infamous William “Wild Bill” Langer (1886–1959; US senator (Republican-North Dakota 1940-1959)), long a thorn in his side but he never forgot the lessons he learned from old Tom Pendergast (1872–1945) who ran the corrupt Democratic Party machine in Kansas City & Jackson County, Missouri, 1925-1939.  Accordingly, Republicans generally got attacked and another called “windy” was Arthur Vandenberg (1884–1951; US senator (Republican-Michigan 1928-1951)) who was generally supportive of Truman’s foreign policy, something which didn’t save him from being shoved with the (figurative) presidential trocar.  The noun & verb trocar dates from the early 1700s and was from the French trocart (literally “three-sided”), the construct being tro- (a variant of trois (three)) + cart (a variant of carre (side)), from the Latin quadra (something square) (the connection being as a corruption of trois-quart (three-quarters).  Having grown up on a farm, Harry Truman's language often was earthy and all his life, happily he  would explain the essential element is successful agriculture was “manure, manure, manure!”  Once, his wife was met by some most respectable ladies, one of whom asked if it would be possible for her to persuade the president to say “fertilizer” instead of “manure”.  Mrs Truman replied it had taken repeated requests over many years to get him in the habit of saying “manure”.  

Cluster

Cluster (pronoubced kluhs-ter)

(1) A number of things of the same kind, growing or held together; a bunch.

(2) A group of things or persons close together.

(3) In US military use, a small metal design placed on a ribbon representing an awarded medal to indicate that the same medal has been awarded again (equivalent to UK & Commonwealth “bar”).

(4) In phonetics, a succession of two or more contiguous consonants in an utterance (eg the str- cluster of strap).

(5) In astronomy, a group of neighboring stars, held together by mutual gravitation, that have essentially the same age and composition and thus supposedly a common origin.

(6) In military ordnance, a group of bombs or warheads, deployed as one stick or in one missile, applied especially to fragmentation and incendiary bombs.

(7) In statistics, a naturally occurring subgroup of a population used in stratified sampling.

(8) In chemistry, a chemical compound or molecule containing groups of metal atoms joined by metal-to-metal bonds; the group of linked metal atoms present.

(9) In computer software, a file system shared by being simultaneously mounted on multiple servers.

(10) In computer hardware, two or more computers working at the same time, each node with its own properties yet displayed in the network under one host name and a single address.

(11) A collective noun for mushrooms (troop is the alternative).

Pre 900: From the Middle English cluster (bunch), from the Old English cluster & clyster (cluster, bunch, branch; a number of things growing naturally together), from the Proto-Germanic klus- & klas- (to clump, lump together) + the Proto-Germanic -þrą (the instrumental suffix), related to the Low German Kluuster (cluster), the dialectal Dutch klister (cluster), the Swedish kluster (cluster) and the Icelandic klasi (cluster; bunch of grapes).  All the European forms are probably from the same root as the noun clot.  The meaning "a number of persons, animals, or things gathered in a close body" is from circa 1400, the intransitive sense, "to form or constitute a cluster," is attested from the 1540s; the use in astronomy dating from 1727.  Cluster is a noun & verb; clustery is an adjective, clustered is an adjective & verb, clustering is a noun, adjective & verb and clusteringly is an adverb; the noun plural is clusters.  The specialized technical words include the adjective intercluster (and inter-cluster) & the noun subcluster (and sub-cluster).

Clusters various

Cluster is a (slang) euphemism for clusterfuck; drawn from US military slang, it means a “bungled or confused undertaking”.  The cluster which the slang references is the cluster bomb, a canister dropped usually from an aircraft which opens to release a number of explosives over a wide area, thus the sense of something that becomes a really big mess.  Cluster bombs began widely to be used during the Second World War, the first deployed being the two-kilogram German Sprengbombe Dickwandig (SD-2) (butterfly-bomb).  The US, UK, USSR and Japan all developed such weapons, described in typical military tradition by an unmemorable alpha-numeric array of part-numbers, the battlefield slang then being "firecracker" or "popcorn" and it wasn’t until 1950 that “cluster bomb” was first used by the manufacturers and another ten years before the term came into general use.

However, the informal compound clusterfuck was at first rather more literal, emerging in 1966 meaning “orgy” or some similar event in which intimacy was enjoyed between multiple participants.  The sense of it referencing a “bungled or confused undertaking” started only in 1969, first noted among US troops in Vietnam who, with some enthusiasm, used it both as a graphic criticism of military tactics and the entire US strategy in the Far East.  The standard military euphemism is "Charlie Foxtrot”.  There are alternative etymologies for clusterfuck but neither has attracted much support, one being it was coined in the 1960s by hippie poet Ed Sanders as “Mongolian Cluster Fuck” and this may have been an invention independent of the military use.  The other is said to date from the Vietnam War and have been the creation of soldiers critical of the middle-management of the army, the majors and lieutenant colonels, those responsible for supply and logistics, aspects of war for millennia the source of many military problems.  The insignia for each of these ranks (respectively in gold or silver), is a small, round oak-leaf cluster, hence the notion when there's a screw up in the supply chain, it's a clusterfuck.  It's a good story but etymologists have doubts about the veracity.

A cluster of mall rats.

Students learning English are taught about euphemisms and the vital part they play in social interaction.  They are of course a feature of many languages but in English some of these sanitizations must seem mysterious and lacking any obvious connection with what is being referenced.  There are also exams and students may be asked both to provide a definition of “euphemism” and an example of use and a good instance of the latter is what to do when a situation really can be described only as “a clusterfuck” or even “a fucking clusterfuck” but circumstances demand a more “polite” word.  So, students might follow the lead of Australian Federal Court Judge Michael Lee (b 1965) in Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited [2024] FCA 369 who in his 420 page judgment declared the matter declared “an omnishambles”. The construct of that was the Latin omni(s) (all) + shambles, from the Middle English schamels (plural of schamel), from the Old English sċeamol & sċamul (bench, stool), from the Proto-West Germanic skamul & skamil (stool, bench), from the Vulgar Latin scamellum, from the Classical Latin scamillum (little bench, ridge), from scamnum (bench, ridge, breadth of a field).  In English, shambles enjoyed a number of meanings including “a scene of great disorder or ruin”, “a cluttered or disorganized mess”, “a. scene of bloodshed, carnage or devastation” or (most evocatively), “a slaughterhouse”.  As one read the judgement one could see what the judge was drawn to the word although, in the quiet of his chambers, he may have been thinking “clusterfuck”.  Helpfully, one of the Murdoch press’s legal commentators, The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen (b 1966; by Barry Goldwater out of Ayn Rand) who had been one of the journalists most attentive to the case, told the word nerds (1) omnishambles dated from 2009 when it was coined for the BBC political satire The Thick Of It and (2) endured well enough to be named the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) 2021 Word of the Year.  The linguistic flourish was a hint of things to come in what was one of the more readable recent judgments.  If a student cites “omnishambles” as a euphemism for “clusterfuck”, a high mark is just about guaranteed.

Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak leaves & Swords (1957 version).  These “de-nazified” awards were first issued by the Federal Republic of Germany (the FRG or West Germany) in 1957 and were awarded only to members of the Wehrmacht entitled to such awards.  Production of these awards ceased in 1986.

German law since the end of World War II generally have prohibited individuals from wearing the swastika but in 1957, under pressure from the newly (1955) reconstituted armed forces (the Bundeswehr (literally "Federal Defense")), the Gesetz über Titel, Orden und Ehrenzeichen (legislation concerning titles, orders and honorary signs) was amended, authorizing the replacement of Nazi-era Knight's Crosses with items with an oak leaf cluster in place of the swastika, essentially identical to the Imperial Iron Cross of 1914.

Lindsay Lohan at the Falling for Christmas (Netflix, 2022) premiere, New York City, November 2022.

The dress was a Valentino sequined embroidered floral lace column gown with jewel neck, long sleeves and concealed back zip.  It was worn with a gold Valentino Rockstud Spike shoulder bag in crackle-effect metallic nappa leather, complemented with Stephanie Gottlieb jewelry including diamond cluster earrings in 18k white gold and a heart shaped yellow sapphire ring with pavé diamonds.