Sex

One of the earliest euphemisms you were taught was about the birds and the bees. This expression alone explains the power of euphemisms — has anyone been actually told why the winged creatures have been invoked? Has the expression been ever followed by any gesture? No, parents over centuries have been content to ask their adolescent children: “I am sure you know about the birds and the bees?” To which the children have always said “Yes”, mostly to spare their parents the growing-up pangs.

A 30-year-old, on the brink of a serious relationship, demands on a website that he be told the story behind the birds and the bees — he has lived long enough. The man with the answer replies: “Don’t feel bad. Nobody explained it to me. The significance of the birds and bees isn’t what they do, it’s simply that they do it, ‘it’, naturally, being a tussle in the tumbleweeds, or wherever it is that the lower orders engage in sex.”

Which brings us to doing “it”, which is a more direct way of dealing with “it”. Accommodating parents justify the fact of their children being at “it” by saying they are “exhibiting perfectly normal behaviour”. A man was recently honoured on the website Slate.com’s search for the best euphemisms for sex for inventing the phrase “Playing Senator” — for the participants are engaged in an act of Congress. Hot reality TV shows have generated another imaginative euphemism: Man asks Woman to “Go off the camera with him”. It’s a bit like “Would you like to come up?” Or “Your place or mine?” Or just “Coffee?”

Which brings us to the first crucial exchange between Charles (Hugh Grant) and Carrie (Andie MacDowell) in Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Charles: Maybe we could just skulk around here for a bit and then go back down.

Carrie: That’s a thought. I don’t usually skulk, but I suppose I could skulk if skulking were required. Do you skulk regularly?

Charles: No. No, I don’t normally think of myself as a skulker but...

Carrie: Well, why don’t you come in and skulk for a while and we’ll see?

And Shakespeare called it the “two-backed beast”. In Othello, Iago, dripping poison, informs Desdemona’s father that she is at “it” with her dark lover: “I am one, sir, that comes to tell you your daughter and the Moor are now making-the-beast-with-two-backs.” But Shakespeare was often vile about sex.

And then as a wise man (or woman) says, you can always turn the most innocuous action statement into a euphemism for sex by just adding “you know what I mean” to the end of statement. Example: “He wanted to have an ice cream, you know what I mean?”

Death

Maybe death is more shameful to describe than sex. (Though death is also a classic euphemism for orgasm in Renaissance literature. That meaning resonates even as Antony cries: “I am dying, Egypt, dying,” and Cleopatra dies soon after. Complicated.)

Now, the US military is collaborating actively on reinventing the Grim Reaper, especially after Iraq. “Collateral damage” hides the horror of the death of innocents. So does “friendly fire”: unintentional killing of US soldiers by the US army.

Even Lord and Lady Macbeth cannot speak of death directly. The lady, who has pushed her husband into killing his father-figure, cannot call the murder, murder, but refers to it as “this night’s great business”. “Out, out, brief candle!” Macbeth cries, on the brevity of life. When we say people around us are passing away, are no more, are we dignifying, or dodging death? Putting it off till it happens to someone close to us, or to us?

But sometimes death, because it can be more serious than sex, can only be joked about. So it is “seven steps to heaven”, “biting the dust”, “a little slumber”, “all souls camp”, “giving up the ghost”, “meeting one’s maker”, “handing in one’s checks” or “kicking the bucket”. One theory has it that the expression roots from the idea that suicidal people would hang themselves by standing on a bucket with a noose around their neck and then kick the bucket away, but there’s still mystery surrounding the phrase, which seems much more profound than this simple explanation suggests. Same for the Bengali expression “potol tola”. Apparently on the web people are calling the final departure being “sent to the archive” or “exported to a flat file”.

But how can people laugh about death so much? We can rage and despair only so much. Then we need to laugh. Then maybe we even forget.

You’re fired

And so about getting fired. Does anyone actually say “you’re fired!” anymore? Chances are, no.

Instead, you are handed the pink slip, the department is right-sized, down-sized or smart-sized, made lean and hungry, or you may be made to choose the VRS option. You are also being given perhaps a change opportunity or your contract is not being renewed. You are also getting a chance, according to the website About.com, to spend more time with your family and pursue your other interests.

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet — and it’s no point calling a spade a horticultural implement. But we would rather not lose our jobs. We would rather be handed the pink slip, even if we were to see “chokhe shorshe phool”. That’s the Bengali euphemism for an unspeakable disaster.

What is your favourite euphemism? Tell t2@abpmail.com