Top 100 Quotes About Euphemism
#1. Every now and then a green dot shifted to yellow. A soldier down, their armored suits detecting the injuries or death that rendered them combat ineffective. Combat ineffective. Such a nice euphemism for one of his kids bleeding out.
James S.A. Corey
#2. In many previously classified documents relating to activities at the base, the words 'Area 51' are conveniently blacked out. There's always a euphemism for it - like 'the test facility' or 'the base' - but never 'Area 51.'
Annie Jacobsen
#3. Tact is kind; diplomacy is useful; euphemism is harmless and sometimes entertaining
Julian Burnside
#4. Faith is a euphemism for prejudice and religion is a euphemism for superstition.
Paul Kenneth Keller
#5. A composite is a euphemism for a lie. It's disorderly. It's dishonest and it's not journalism.
Fred W. Friendly
#6. They had been harboring a hatred for us which we had grown accustomed to calling "prejudice." What a gentle word that was! What a euphemism!
Edith Hahn Beer
#9. Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.
J.D. Salinger
#10. She hated that many of her colleagues hid behind the title "Planned Parenthood." That was a euphemism. "It irks my very soul and all that is Irish in me to acquiesce to the appeasement group that is so prevalent in our beloved organization," she wrote.
David Halberstam
#11. The language of the younger generation has the brutality of the city and an assertion of threatening power at hand, not to come. It is military, theatrical, and at its most coherent probably a lasting repudiation of empty courtesy and bureaucratic euphemism.
Elizabeth Hardwick
#12. The intangibles are a euphemism for we have no idea what we're looking for but we know it when we see it.
Brian Billick
#13. Underhand euphemism are used, not so much to conceal offence and to deliberately disguise a topic and deceive
Kate Burridge
#14. Clouds and Rain' is a Chinese euphemism for sex. 'The Bringer of Clouds and Rain' is a lady of the night, a prostitute,
Zahra Owens
#15. What marks the transition from non-sentient to sentient beings? A model of increasing complexity based on evolution through natural selection is simply a descriptive hypothesis, a kind of euphemism for "mystery," and not a satisfactory explanation.
Dalai Lama XIV
#16. 'Women's fashion' is a euphemism for fashion created by men for women.
Andrea Dworkin
#17. So, you're the man who can't spell 'fuck.'"
Dorothy Parker to Norman Mailer after publishers had convinced Mailer to replace the word with a euphemism, 'fug,' in his 1948 book, "The Naked and the Dead.
Dorothy Parker
#18. Democracy has become Empire's euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism.
Arundhati Roy
#19. A senior Israeli intelligence officer explained that the IDF attacked "both aspects of Hamas - its resistance or military wing and its dawa, or social wing," the latter a euphemism for the civilian society.
Noam Chomsky
#20. Controversial' as we all know, is often a euphemism for 'interesting and intelligent.
Kevin Smith
#21. When I heard you could get a disease from playing with your prairie dog, I thought, 'Wow, what a euphemism.' I thought playing with my prairie dog was the best way to avoid diseases.
Greg Giraldo
#22. No, thank you, it's nothing serious. A headache that was not serious was the usual euphemism for a menstrual period, and everyone accepted this without further comment.
Ken Follett
#23. We didn't have sex."
"What?" Cale blinks at her.
"We just talked."
Talked. Like ... talking? "That isn't a euphemism for some complicated sex act I don't know about, is it?
Dominique Frost
#24. Apparently my subconscious freaked out when I saw blood on the vet's coat and then I abruptly passed out right on my cat. (That's not a euphemism.)
Jenny Lawson
#25. Negotiations are a euphemism for capitulation if the shadow of power is not cast across the bargaining table.
George Schultz
#26. There is a term called political correctness, and I consider it to be a euphemism for political cowardice.
Milos Zeman
#28. Mick, I love your tiger. Which isn't a euphemism for your penis. Though I really like that too.
Lauren Dane
#29. The Japanese tend to communicate via nuance and euphemism, often leaving important things unsaid; whereas Americans tend to think they're being subtle when they refrain from grabbing the listener by the shirt.
Dave Barry
#30. Nature is an outcry, unpolished truth; the art - a euphemism - tamed wilderness.
Dejan Stojanovic
#31. To call yourself 'plus size' is just a euphemism for being fat. Life is much easier when you're thinner. Big is not beautiful, of course a job comes down to how you look.
Katie Hopkins
#32. "Striking looking." That's a euphemism if I ever heard one.
Ron Perlman
#33. There is an affinity between falling asleep and dying that cannot be ignored. In fact, the word sleep is commonly used as a euphemism for "death"; we speak of putting a pet to sleep, rather than admitting we have asked a veterinarian to (kindly) kill him or her.
Anonymous
#34. Which statements are true according to the passage?
A) Science, governments, and your doctor should be trusted.
B) 'Comforting her deep into the night' is a euphemism for sneaking candy.
C) The ugliest phrase used in this passage is 'female.'
D) Bad things really do come in threes.
Tupelo Hassman
#35. Rather than signalling the aspiration for system of checks and balances against absolute power, democracy become a euphemism for majority rule.
Peter Mansfield
#36. Partner struck me as an ugly euphemism. Euphemism in the sense that people don't like to talk about sex, so they displace it on to some kind of business model. Since I have a distaste for business, I see no appeal to something that sounds like a financial leadership team.
Barbara Browning
#37. Euphemism is a human device to conceal the horrors of reality.
Paul Johnson
#38. Although the term dialogue was really a euphemism for scientists trying to kill each other, this format worked very well ...
Joao Magueijo
#39. I find it difficult sometimes to read exploration as other than a euphemism for empire and exploitation. The
Alan Moore
#40. Miss von Osterloh had looked through it once during an idle fifteen minutes and pronunce it "quite sophisticated," which veredict was her euphemism for "inhumanly boring.
Thomas Mann
#41. Maybe I can braid your hair, and we can talk about our life goals." Sarah wrinkles her nose. "Or maybe you can check to see whether I'm wearing panties or not." "So hair braiding is out?" "Uh, yeah, unless it's a euphemism for taking your clothes off.
Helena Hunting
#43. I'm waxed clean - hairless as the day as I was born. But don't say 'Tia has no pubic hair.' That's so clinical. Use a nice euphemism. Say 'She's mowed her secret garden' or 'She's cleared the way to the Promised Land.' Because that's what it is, right?
Tia Carrere
#44. Surely, that is merely a colorful euphemism, rather than a statement of desire.
Jim Butcher
#45. Euphemism in the workplace does not end with job descriptions. It reaches a pusillanimous peak at the other end of the work process - in dismissal.
Nigel Rees
#46. The more syllables a euphemism has, the further divorced from reality it is.
George Carlin
#47. I'm with an old family was the euphemism used to dignify the professions of white folks' cooks and maids who talked so affectedly among their own kind in Roxbury [Massachusetts] that you couldn't even understand them.
Malcolm X
#49. Global governance is just a euphemism for global government.
Jacques Attali
#50. Everybody out on the sidewalk is a pedestrian Mercedes, wallowing in entitlement - colliding, snarling, shoving ahead without even the hollow-to-begin-with local euphemism Excuse me.
Thomas Pynchon
#51. To use a Southern euphemism, our space program has been snake-bit.
Al Gore
#52. Tug the pug? Wax his ax? Wobble his knob? "Did you guys hold a Who Can Come Up with the Worst Euphemism contest at some point and not invite me?" he called up
Julie Ann Walker
#53. There should be a new, more honest euphemism. Like, I'm leaving office because I plan to solicit more anonymous sex in bathrooms.
Tina Fey
#54. Patrimonial capitalism's legacy is that many people see reform as a euphemism for corruption and self-dealing.
James Surowiecki
#55. "Fussy eater" is a euphemism for "big pain in the ass."
George Carlin
#56. Cloud computing is a great euphemism for centralization of computer services under one server.
Evgeny Morozov
#57. Asymmetrical warfare is a euphemism for terrorism, just like collateral damage is a euphemism for killing innocent civilians.
Alan Dershowitz
#58. Today promised not to be about the ecstasy of life on a farm. Today was the day we were "processing" broilers or, to abandon euphemism, killing chickens.
Michael Pollan
#59. In terms of the biology of the planet, development is a euphemism for destruction.
Helen Caldicott
#60. Sleeping together is a euphemism for people, but tantamount to marriage with cats.
Marge Piercy
#61. Frankness is usually a euphemism for rudeness.
Muriel Spark
#62. Gorton flu" quickly became a euphemism for pissed as a parrot.
Mungo MacCallum
#63. I've never been a fan of euphemism.
Jo Brand
#64. To this day the f-word turns my stomach. Because 'fine' is a euphemism for everything you're scared of saying.
Amy Molloy
#65. I was feeling low. Low is the depressive's euphemism for despair.
Sally Brampton
#66. Planned Parenthood's entire existence is basically based on keeping people in the dark through euphemism. You don't call it genocide, you call it reproductive health. So that's why Planned Parenthood has - nobody really thought.
Greg Gutfeld
#67. It's often the case that when a critic uses an embarrassingly accurate term to describe what a wrong-doer is doing, the wrong-doer protests: "Why don't you use my white-washed, conscience-soothing euphemism?" Such euphemisms, they claim, help promote "civilized debate."
Steve Kangas
#68. We want to create a sort of linguistic Lourdes, where evil and misfortune are dispelled by a dip in the waters of euphemism
Robert Hughes
#69. Any euphemism ceases to be euphemistic after a time and the true meaning begins to show through. It's a losing game, but we keep on trying.
Joseph Wood Krutch
#70. Pantheism is a self-defeating concept, because the concept of a God presupposes a world different from him as an essential correlate. If, on the other hand, the world is supposed to take over his role, then an absolute world without God remains; hence pantheism is only an euphemism for atheism.
Arthur Schopenhauer
#71. It hurt, and that is not a euphemism. It hurt like a beating.
John Green
#72. When I spoke of having a drink, it was a euphemism for having a whole flock of them.
Margaret Halsey
#73. Her Squire, Celena, Ms. Blood Rite, I-kill-anything-that-breaks-formation, is on her way over here to have a word with you. Since Celena isn't real big on conversation, I'm taking that as a euphemism for 'kick your ass.' (Rafael)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#74. And then she said, 'Let's play Truth or Dare' and then you fucked her."
"Wait, you fucked her? In front of the Colonel?" Takumi cried.
"I didn't fuck her."
"Calm down, guys," the Colonel said, throwing up his hands. "It's a euphemism."
"For what?" Takumi asked.
"Kissing.
John Green
#75. I'm resourceful," she called after him.
Resourceful, he thought, rinsing his hands with the ladle she'd left in the bucket. "A euphemism commonly used by successful criminals," he called out to her.
"If I were so successful," she called back, "I wouldn't be talking to you.
Roxanne Snopek
#76. Once one understands that 'racial tensions' is a euphemism for a black animosity toward whites and a left-wing construct, one begins to understand why the election of a black president has had no impact on most blacks or on the left.
Dennis Prager
#77. He called us." "Dominick Rochester?" "Yes." "When?" "Last night. He said he met with you." Met, Myron thought. Nice euphemism.
Harlan Coben
#78. The exact meaning of irony is so narrow that the word is hardly worth using; in its broad, current definition, it's a euphemism for sarcasm. 'I'm not being sarcastic; I'm being ironic.' No, you're not. You're evading the responsibility for being sarcastic.
Richard Corliss
#79. Dated" in Selah's book, being a euphemism for "had enthusiastic and frequent sex with".
Charlaine Harris
#80. Kat is sitting cross-legged on the floor in her underwear and red T-shirt, leaning in to her laptop. I'm on the lip of the bed above her with my Kindle drawing power from her USB port - um, not a euphemism - reading "The Dragon-Song Chronicles" for the fourth time.
Robin Sloan
#81. When we shrink from the sight of something, when we shroud it in euphemism, that is usually a sign of inner conflict, of unsettled hearts, a sign that something has gone wrong in our moral reasoning.
Matthew Scully
#82. It was starting to seem to her that being "forward-thinking" too often involved avoiding any kind of thought at all - especially about things that might benefit from a great deal of thinking.
Kristin Cashore
#83. When my mother passed away several years ago - well, wait a minute. Actually, she didn't 'pass away.' She died. Something about that verb, 'to pass away' always sounds to me as if someone just drifted through the wallpaper. No, my mother did not pass away. She definitely died.
Steve Allen
#85. He who was given the freedom to ask whatever should give the freedom to be answered however.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#86. You are a manipulator.
I like to think of myself more as an outcome engineer.
J.R. Ward
#87. Progressives' don't just redefine (and valorize) deviancy; they insist on renaming it, too.
Kathy Shaidle
#89. Don't ever call me mad, Mycroft. I'm not mad. I'm just ... well, differently moraled, that's all.
Jasper Fforde
#90. I don't like the word 'alcoholic'. I like to think of myself as an advanced drinker.
Chelsea Handler
#91. You're not allowed to call them dinosaurs any more," said Yo-less. "It's speciesist. You have to call them pre-petroleum persons.
Terry Pratchett
#93. It was nice to call my parents and proudly tell them, "My lady garden is going viral." In hindsight, that may have been a poor choice of phrasing.
Jenny Lawson
#94. World domination is such an ugly phrase. I prefer to call it world optimisation.
Eliezer Yudkowsky
#96. The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.
Dylan Thomas
#97. A lot of nonsense is spoken at funerals, especially when the deceased had not been well liked in life. Many euphemisms are called into play: "vital," "energetic," and (repetitively) "full of life.
G.M. Malliet
#98. Then, as on the night before, we lay down together and I proved how great our friendship had become.
Henry M. Christman
#99. I'm not psycho...I just like psychotic things.
Gerard Way
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