Euphemisms. Why do we have them? Why are people taught that certain valid, accurate and simple words are 'unpleasant', that they should be hidden? Why are words seen as ‘swear words’? The common English language swear-words are simply words that the Normal invaders of Britain didn’t like because they weren’t French, and so were ‘low class’ words. And that attitude has stuck firmly in place.
Let’s look at slightly more recent times. Words like hell and damn. Words that seem to have been taken from the Christian bible (‘damn’ is an abbreviation) and put into general use. Does replacing the use of those two words with ‘heck’ and ‘darn’ really make it sound better? Everyone knows exactly what word is intended, so why use the euphemism?
Come right up to modern times and we are getting more and more people here asking to use the ‘bathroom’. Seeing ‘rest room’ signs on doors in public places. Bloody hell people, it’s a TOILET – a simple toilet! The thing that we sit on is a toilet pan. What is so offensive? Come to my house and ask to use the bathroom and that's exactly where you'll be shown, the bathroom. It has a bath, a hand basin and a shower. Not what you wanted? Then ask to use the toilet - that is the correct name. Look up the word in a dictionary.
In our job we use items that have names associated with plumbing and engineering. For instance, to join hoses together we have couplings. If these couplings have an external, or visible, thread they are ‘male couplings’; an internal thread and they are ‘female couplings’. Should we invent new terms for these items because some narrow minded, puerile person is ‘offended’? I think not, the problem is in the eye of the beholder. School kids always laugh when I explain these hose fittings to them. They laugh once and then use these correct terms, as they are being taught to do.
This rant came about because someone saw fit to replace the word ‘penis’ in a thread title. Replace a simple word with “Private Parts”. “Private Parts” – sounds like someone who’s just joined the Army, what is his or her given name?
Using a euphemism doesn’t make things nicer, it makes them worse. As a child of ten I used to laugh at my school dictionary describing ‘fart’ as “an explosion of air between the legs”. When we were given better dictionaries the joke was removed, a fart became “an emission of wind from the anus”. Accurate and no longer funny, even to young minds.