On the euphemism watch

From Benjamin Tolbert on ADS-L:

My University now has a “budget realignment task force”.

I think this = “people who decide who and what is cut.”

That list has had previous discussions about euphemisms for firing or discontinuing employees (“letting them go”), of which there are no end, all designed to avoid the nasty truth through administrative jargon. This is a particularly impressive example, a four-word compound noun (in seven syllables). Awkward and clunky.

There might be even worse examples out there. Much more embarrassing than sex.

This entry was posted on April 2, 2014 at 6:20 am and is filed under Euphemism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “On the euphemism watch”

arnold zwicky Says:
April 2, 2014 at 9:55 am | Reply
On ADS-L, Larry Horn reports a less extravagant buut more pointed example:

At Yale in the early 90s it was called “the restructuring committee”. Linguistics almost got restructured out of existence.

In reply, Benjamin Barrett:

That word entered Japanese as risutora. If you get fired, you can even use it in the passive: risutora sareru.

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