If You Can't Say Something Nasty

Our Victorian forebears referred to legs as "limbs" and to chicken breasts as "white meat." Today we're forthright about anatomy but squeamish about new no-no's like money and stupidity.

Slate's Andy Bowers has been having some fun with the new euphemisms in a monthly podcast inaugurated in July. He's joined by Barbara Wallraff, author of monthly language columns for The Atlantic Monthly in which, among other things, she invites readers to invent new words for familiar but as-yet-unnamed phenomena.

The most recent Slate challenge was corporate euphemisms, and readers chimed in with the zeal of the underpaid, the overworked, and the recently rightsized. Listen to the results here. Some of my favorites:

• "We are unable to operationalize your request." Translation: "No." (For more on "operationalize," see the second half of William Safire's On Language column in last Sunday's New York Times.)
• "Liberating captive assets." Translation: stealing office supplies.
• "PEBKAC," an initialization of "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair." Translation: "We have met the problem and it is you."
• "On eternity leave." Translation: fired. (As Wallraff explains, "fired" is itself a euphemism derived from "fired out of a cannon.")

Next month's topic: synonyms for death. Send entries by September 30 to podcast@wordcourt.com. And don't bother recycling the Monty Python dead parrot sketch; Wallraff knows all about it. In fact, she gives a spirited recital on this month's podcast.

Comments

[Deity]

hi there. i was looking for a way to explain the expression "word" (e.g. i don't like the way she dress. word!) to my students and i stumbled upon your site. what you have here is pretty cool. i like it. is it okay to link you in my site?

btw, since i am not really a native speaker and i am not well oriented with most american speakers, may i ask what better way to express the above-mentioned term?

my students are korean:)

[Deity]

*not oriented with most american daily expression.