“ the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh or blunt.” (Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English language, 1996) “ a mild expression that people use when they want to talk about something unpleasant or embarrassing without mentioning the thing itself.” (Macmillan English Dictionary,2002)
Euphemism
• The earliest euphemisms are the euphemistic names of Gods. • Euphemism: is derived from Greek.
eu: good pleasant -pheme: speech The whole meaning is word ofna VS Western country
Sociolinguistics by Chen Yuan, he gives a most detailed description of euphemism in a whole chapter.
Figures and Vocabulary by Li Guonan in 2001, he studied it systematically including feature, formation, cultural connation, and variation of euphemism.
Other rhetorical books
assume that euphemism is a figure of speech and define it briefly to comfortable words, gilded words, cosmetic words, prudish phrase, language of deceit and so on.
George Blunt for the first time introduced this term and defined it as “a good or favorable interpretation of a bad word.
John Ayto: There is more to euphemism than just words. (Euphemisms in 1993) According to him, body language, inarticulate sounds, syntax, grammar or even the way we pronounce words can be euphemistic too.