{"id":1738,"date":"2013-06-05T22:33:14","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T02:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thiscontemplativelife.com\/?p=1738"},"modified":"2013-06-05T22:33:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-06T02:33:14","slug":"the-golden-age-of-euphemism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/2013\/06\/05\/the-golden-age-of-euphemism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Golden Age of Euphemism"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a hilarious examination of the squeamishness around words that emerged in the USA in the last 1o0\u00a0years, or so, especially their fondness for euphemisms. A friend of a friend visited me in California while researching for a PhD (or post-doc) in Austin Texas (now don’t be telling me how hipsterish they are there). She said that she was told very soon after arriving that she must not say “toilet” as it was rude, tantamount to asking where the “shithouse” is, she came to understand. I was already laughing about “restroom” where you cannot rest, “bathroom” with no bath etc. It makes “freshening up” (Joan on Mad Men<\/em>) sound positively direct. And the fact that toilet paper is labeled “bathroom tissue” or people say “TP”\u00a0 is positively perverse IMHO.<\/p>\n

I read somewhere that in the US they started saying light and dark meat as they were too squeamish to say breast or leg. I had no idea how rude the word leg had become by the turn of the last century. I just posted Mark Bittman’s 45 minute roast turkey recipe <\/a>and wanted to reference that and found this article by Ralph Keyes, who wrote Euphemania: Our Love Affair with Euphemisms<\/em> (Little, Brown).<\/p>\n

Read this whole article for excellent details:<\/p>\n

The Golden Age of Euphemism | History News Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is an excerpt relating to poultry:<\/p>\n

Like Mrs. Trollope, visitors from abroad routinely took note of the stilted language used by antebellum Americans.\u00a0 Alexis de Tocqueville thought it might be due to the fact that men and women mingled freely in the United States, forcing both sexes to choose their words carefully.\u00a0 In addition, the fact that Americans routinely saw themselves as on their way to affluence (if not affluent already) made them feel it was crucial to use the right words, refined words, ones they thought would help them get there.<\/p>\n

Which terms needed to be avoided and which ones were appropriate wasn\u2019t always clear, however, even to English-speaking visitors.\u00a0 One summer day in 1837 the English naval Captain Frederick Marryat got in trouble by innocently asking a young American friend whether she\u2019d hurt her leg after taking a tumble while they visited Niagara Falls.\u00a0 The outraged woman informed Capt. Marryat that this word was not <\/em>used in her country.\u00a0 When the aristocratic Englishman begged her pardon and asked what word was <\/em>used for that body part, she responded \u201climb.\u201d<\/p>\n

The need to avoid saying \u201cleg\u201dat this time led to remarkable euphemistic creativity. \u00a0In addition to the pedestrian limbs <\/em>(a shortening of nether limbs<\/em>), mid-nineteenth century synonyms for legincluded understandings <\/em>and underpinners.\u00a0 <\/em>In his 1849 novella Kavanaugh, <\/em>Henry Wadsworth Longfellow excerpted this advisory from the prospectus of a fashionable girls\u2019 boarding school: \u00a0\u201cYoung ladies are not allowed to cross their benders in school.\u201d\u00a0 A few years later linguist Richard Meade Bache talked with an American woman who stammered about before averring that women in New England tended to have well-formed extremities <\/em>(i.e. arms and legs).\u00a0 After the Civil War, Bache, the son of Union Gen. George Meade, overheard another woman ask a hotel waiter to bring her a chicken\u2019s trotter <\/em>(i.e., a leg).\u00a0 An English visitor to America at this time was puzzled when asked by a woman at a dinner table if he\u2019d please give her \u201cthe first and second joint of a chicken\u201d (leg again).\u00a0 Polite guests at American tables knew that asking a poultry-serving hostess for white meat <\/em>instead of \u201cbreast meat,<\/em>\u201d dark meat <\/em>instead of a \u201cthigh,<\/em>\u201dand a drumstick <\/em>in place of a \u201cleg\u201d saved embarrassment all around.<\/em><\/p>\n

Poultry just presented all manner of verbal pitfalls.\u00a0 Although still called \u201ccocks\u201d by Britons, in the United States male chickens became crowers, <\/em>then roosters.\u00a0 <\/em>This was not without controversy.\u00a0 \u201cThe word rooster <\/em>is an Americanism,\u201d noted Bache, \u201cwhich, the sooner we forget, the better.\u00a0 Does not the hen of the same species roost also?\u201d\u00a0 A compiler of Americanisms quoted an English critic who defined rooster <\/em>as \u201ca ladyism for cock.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>A British visitor to the U.S. professed to have heard a rooster and ox story<\/em> (i.e., \u201ca cock and bull tale\u201d).\u00a0 In a mid-nineteenth century spoof, Canadian humorist Thomas Haliburton portrayed a Massachusetts woman who described her brother as a \u201crooster swain\u201d in the navy.\u00a0 When pressed for the meaning of that rank by a man she knew, the young woman responded, \u201ca rooster swain, if you must know, you wicked critter you, is a cockswain; a word you know’d well enough warn’t fit for a lady to speak.\u201d<\/p>\n

What was the problem here?\u00a0 On the one hand cock<\/em> was merely short for cockerel, <\/em>a male chicken.\u00a0 But, because it was also a contraction of watercock, <\/em>the spigot of a barrel, cock <\/em>had become slang for penis.\u00a0 <\/em>Unfortunately that tainted word was embedded in many another.\u00a0 In the U.S. especially, previously innocent terms such as \u201ccock-eyed\u201d and \u201ccock-sure\u201d could no longer be used in mixed company.\u00a0 Under this regimen cockroaches became mere roaches <\/em>and weathercocks were renamed weathervanes.\u00a0 <\/em>Haycocks became haystacks, <\/em>and apricocks were re-dubbed apricots. <\/em>\u00a0Those burdened with last names such as Hitchcock and Leacock felt the heat.\u00a0 In response, an American family named Alcocke changed their name to Alcox.\u00a0 <\/em>Fearing that this might not be adequate, before siring a daughter named Louisa May in 1832, Bronson Alcox became Bronson Alcott. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a hilarious examination of the squeamishness around words that emerged in the USA in the last 1o0\u00a0years, or so, especially their fondness for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[102,183,281,498],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thiscontemplativelife.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}