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What exactly are you saying?

A few years back, when I was looking to rent an apartment in Jerusalem, I learned how to decode the real estate agent’s definitions. “Savir,” decent, basically meant the apartment looked unchanged since the founding of the state of Israel in 1948. Another stock phrase was “tzarich ketzat shiputzim,” it needs a bit of work. Meaning: run for your life! Eventually, I learned not to bother looking at any “savir” or “tzarich ktzat shiputzim” apartments.

We all use euphemisms for various delicate topics. Talmudic parlance is replete with euphemisms, and many literary commentators have explained the classic children’s book Alice in Wonderland as one big literary euphemism.

Intrinsically, I like the idea of euphemisms, since the idea behind them often is sensitivity in how you perceive someone or in how you deliver difficult information, sparing a person embarrassment. Still, I appreciate the inventory of euphemisms that are harmless, or clever witticisms. Of course, there are many political euphemisms that develop and convey a lot about a culture, a people — almost becoming its own private language. For the most part, many euphemisms are simply subsumed under our everyday language.

So why is this bothering me lately? Discourse of our society seems to be drenched in empty euphemisms. Clearly, certain topics are delicate, such as topics pertaining to the sexual sphere. Not everything needs to be explicit. There is a true art to knowing how to say something.

But often, to veil the simple and visceral power of a word is damaging. Even when it pertains to an area as delicate and modest as the sexual sphere, certain words should be used, given the sexual crimes that take place. Perhaps it is better to be informed more directly about certain dimensions of our society.

Mostly, there is a certain integrity that is lost when euphemisms prevail over the simplicity and power of a plain and honest word or phrase. Something is lost in the tone of the word, or the situation being described, with a euphemism. A word becomes diluted, mild, vague. Like a plastic wrap mediating between you and food, the content of what is said becomes wrapped in a bubble of sterile meaning.

Take the now common phrase, “depopulate.” What you are really saying is kill, but what you convey instead is some vague implication of the population being thinned. How exactly this takes place, or the moral or procedural implications, is left unstated. It’s simple, you just “depopulate” — whatever that means.

How about “military act” for war?

Or, “substance abuser” for a drug addict?

“Inconsistent” for a liar, “collateral damage” for not facing the painful reality of civilians accidentally dying, and the same goes for “casualties” when you are really saying dead people.

Then there is “friendly fire,” a glib way of covering up the tragic fact that our soldiers were shot down by our own forces.

No one gets fired anymore, companies just “downsize.”

There are “visually impaired” and “hearing impaired” people. No one is blind or deaf anymore. Euphemisms, it would seem in this case, can even be condescending.

To obscure the meaning of certain words by cloaking them in a more civilized and distant manner sometimes softens painful news or may serve as a way of talking about social taboos. But make no mistake, euphemisms just as conveniently make words and situations feel less real.

Euphemisms can sometimes help us make contact with an uncomfortable reality we would rather not face. But euphemisms also influence how we think about a particular reality. Sometimes the difference between speaking openly and directly, using real painful words, and between speaking euphemistically, can mean the difference between mobilizing us to take action or lulling us, numbing us, so that we pass up an opportunity or ignore a wrongdoing, chalking up our indifference, you know, to a “depopulation” or something like that.



Tehilla Goldberg

IJN columnist | View from Central Park


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