by Ralph Keyes
Other euphemisms are more setting specific. A task beneath one’s pay grade is called toast and water at a company whose owner sometimes asks department heads to fetch these items from a nearby café. In another, forest killer refers to someone who generates more paper than product. Installing Publisher (a software program) is euphemistic for “wasting time” among employees of a high-tech firm. A related abbreviation, ETW, is short for an “external time waster,” a gabby coworker who distracts you from your work. In one office, absent employees are said to be DTH. This technically means “down the hall” but actually means “I have no idea where this person is.”
“Nowhere in our language is there so much misplaced inventiveness and ludicrous contrivance as in workplace euphemisms,” British word maven Nigel Rees told a reporter. These euphemisms serve all the usual purposes—politeness, evasion, obfuscation, deception, deflection—and others unique to any setting where a group of people develop their own lingo over time. They incorporate insider talk, reference to shared experience, and, least appreciated of all, fun. Archeuphemisms are tedium busters. When we murmur, “Wouldn’t you say Tammy’s a bit three-rated?” with a cocked eyebrow and elicit a knowing nod and “Yeah, I’d say she has lots of improvement opportunities,” our office-specific euphemisms become cool team builders.
Euphemism-rich working environments are a relatively modern phenomenon. They reflect the growth of white-collar workforces where men and women are colleagues who need to watch what they say. Among the mostly male workforces on farms and in factories, mines, and other settings where manual labor took place, circumlocutions were seldom necessary. One study of loggers in the mid-1920s found them using slangy terms such as bull of the woods for “foreman,” ink-slinger for “clerk,” and pimp-stick for “cigarette” (at a time when they were considered effete by blue-collar workers). One logger unhappy with another might threaten to knock his ears down, pat him on the lip, or shove his nose down to his navel. This would never pass muster in an office, of course. As growing numbers of us work in genteel, politics-ridden settings, the need to master euphemisms has exploded.
Most workplaces are filled with indirect ways to describe dicey employees. Overly picky staff members can be called fastidious or detail oriented. Such employees may show a high level of professionalism. They are hardworking and conscientious (if not particularly productive). It takes a keen awareness of nuance to realize that positive-sounding descriptives can be negative or positive depending on the context and who’s doing the describing.
An obsessive-compulsive employee’s lazy counterpart might be called laid back. Unimaginative plodders are diligent. Ineffectual employees who don’t offend anyone have good people skills. Ones too timorous to make waves are team players. Good micromanagers can’t see the forest for the trees.
The natural home of such euphemisms is in letters of reference. Since those who write them can be legally liable for what they say, an ability to decipher reference-letter euphemisms is crucial for those who read them in human resources or human capital management (aka personnel departments). Does enthusiastic mean over-the-top manic? Is conscientious a tip-off that this person lacks imagination? Is a self-starter an obnoxious individual who works alone because he can’t get along with anyone? Only the letter writer knows for sure.
You’re Furloughed!
A few months after he was onboarded by his new employer, Jack wrote to tell me he’d been RIFFED. This term, Jack explained, was based on RIF, an acronym for “reduction in force.” In other words, he’d been fired.
Discharging employees is one of the leading occasions for euphemistic discourse in the workplace. No one is fired, of course, or sacked, though they might be furloughed (or, more likely, placed on indefinite furlough). Discharged employees were part of a staff reduction, a recalibration of personnel, or a redeployment of resources. Alternatively, they might be deaccessioned, decommissioned, dehired, discontinued, outplaced, separated, terminated, unassigned, made redundant, or, in the latest circumlocution, decruited. Employees at a big bank in New York talk of being excessed. (“Jake got excessed last week due to a re-org.”) Counterparts in a Silicon Valley company worry about being surplussed. The voicemail of a dismissed computer company executive there told callers he’d been uninstalled.
“We don’t fire anyone anymore (except for illegal activity),” e-mails my friend Angie. “When we want to get rid of people, we start with those who have the lowest ratings and ‘offer them a package,’ ” meaning a financial incentive to leave the company. Offer a package, in other words, is basically a euphemism for “lay off.”
The bigger the layoff, the milder the euphemisms. An economist at Morgan Stanley first called the mass discharging of workers downsizing. This is only one of many useful verbal evasions available when lots of employees are let go. For public consumption, workforce adjustments are made to curtail redundancies. Jobs get eliminated due to a skill-mix adjustment.
We didn’t fire all those people. We simply restructured our organization. Rationalized it. You know what I’m saying? We re-engineered. If you catch my drift. Streamlined the operation. We reconfigured our resources to align them better with emerging market conditions.
Putting bland labels on brutal acts this way is a key source of workplace frustration and fury. It’s as if an executioner took to calling beheadings a form of weight reduction. If ever euphemisms help us speak about the unspeakable it’s here.
Euphemisms are no less prevalent on the receiving end, among those who leave jobs under pressure to pursue other opportunities or to spend more time with my family. A New York Times article about such verbal feints traced this one back to at least 1956 when the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said he was leaving to find work that would allow him to spend more time with his family. As Times reporter Katie Hafner pointed out, many who subsequently offered this explanation for why they left jobs soon found demanding new ones that took them away from their families again. Some won’t use such euphemistic language, however. When Carly Fiorina was dismissed as CEO of Hewlett Packard in 2005, she refused to say she’d decided to move on or that she wanted to spend more time with her family, as board members suggested. Instead Fiorina announced that she’d been fired. According to court documents examined by Hafner, another HP executive said he was leaving to protest deceptive information-gathering at the computer company. “Don’t you dare say I resigned to spend more time with my children,” this executive warned as he departed.
Job Descriptions
My first job out of college was as a special assistant to the publisher of a newspaper. What made this job so special was never entirely clear. Eventually, I left that position to become a freelance writer only to discover that—like “consultant” or “model”—this job title is perceived by many as a euphemism for “unemployed.” Today, of course, I’m no longer a writer. Now, I’m a content provider.
Americans are particularly partial to fancy job titles. A direct linguistic line can be drawn from America’s physicians to its morticians, beauticians, and estheticians (who specialize in cosmetic skin care). Such puffed-up titles are part and parcel of what historian Daniel Boorstin has called the “booster talk” of exuberant New World palaver. Cut loose from more circumscribed job descriptions in countries they left behind, Americans felt free to concoct their own more grandiose versions. Today this is known as “uptitling.” The guy who services my photocopier is a field engineer. A roofer in my area has recast himself as a home enhancement specialist. A man I know in Indianapolis recently got his sub made by a sandwich artist. And don’t forget baristas.
Fiddling with titles provides a great opportunity to create new euphemisms, especially ones meant to glorify mundane jobs. Did I say “jobs”? I meant to say positions. Some up-to-date companies have even done away with positions in favor of roles or assignments for their employees. The human capital department of a grocery chain in Canada has a mandate to “design, develop and enhance and execute
talent acquisitions strategies that facilitate and support a high performance culture.” In a nutshell: they try to hire good people.
Walmart pioneered the modern era of title inflation after deciding that it would no longer employ salesmen or saleswomen, only sales associates. Other euphemistic titles followed elsewhere: purchase advisers, product specialists, sales consultants, customer service representatives, service providers, or simply team members. IKEA calls them all coworkers.
This is part of a trend dating back decades in which—with no change in their job descriptions—“waiters” became servers, and “stewardesses” were retitled flight attendants. “Typists” became secretaries, then administrative assistants (admins in some settings). Secretaries’ Day was renamed Administrative Assistants’ Day, then Administrative Professionals’ Day. “Janitors” were redubbed custodians, then maintenance workers. At a hospital recently, I heard “I need Environmental Services to clean up a spill” over the intercom.
After American prisons became correctional institutions, prison guards were renamed correctional officers. “Watchmen” became security guards. “Bodyguards” are now personnel protection specialists; “housekeepers,” domestic workers. “Dogcatchers” were promoted to animal control specialists in the United States, canine control officers in the United Kingdom. There, yesterday’s “dustmen” have been upgraded to today’s refuse collectors, “bookies” to turf accountants, and “rat catchers” to rodent officers. Nigel Rees considers such verbal promotions a misguided effort to buff up the image of jobholders who aren’t particularly interested in having their image buffed.
During the past century, “engineer”—a designation that first appeared in the 1850 census—was grafted on to all manner of humdrum pursuits to give them added cachet (most notably sanitary engineer for “garbage man”). Needless to say, this trend did not make actual engineers happy. For a time the Engineering News-Record devoted a weekly column to recording outrages such as vision engineer (optician), wrapping engineer (gift wrappers), box engineer (packing specialists), fumigating engineer (exterminator), and household engineer (housewife). Before World War II, the National Society of Professional Engineers waged an unsuccessful campaign to have the engineers who ran train locomotives redubbed enginemen.
“Technician” is our era’s answer to “engineer.” The onetime “mechanic” who works on my car is now an automotive technician. A local beauty salon no longer employs “manicurists.” They do, however, have nail technicians. One year the American Dialect Society gave its “Most Euphemistic” award to the job title scooping technician, for someone whose work involves cleaning up dog poop.
The name used for those who sell real estate underwent its own transformation a century ago. This was at their own behest. In 1915 Minneapolis real estate agent Charles Chadbourn grew annoyed by the media’s reference to a “real estate man” who exploited widows. Didn’t members of his vocation deserve a more dignified title? Real estate itself was fine, a term that originated with royal grants of land. But man or agent lacked distinction. The suffix -or, Chadbourn thought, suggested a doer, someone who acts (executor, administrator, etc.). By combining the two, Chadbourn came up with realtor. His energetic efforts to get colleagues and the public to accept this new designation bore lasting fruit.
When it comes to creating and purveying euphemistic modifiers, realtors stand alone. Perhaps the power of positive euphemizing is something they teach in realty school. Real estate agents don’t sell small houses but do list charmers that are snug, intimate, cute, cozy, or, in England, bijou. If inexpensive, such modest dwellings are starter homes. Disheveled houses have character. They show great potential. If small to boot, they are quaint. Larger down-at-the-heels homes are gracious or elegant. Or classic. Or colonial. A rustic or historic house probably needs work. Handyman specials need lots of work (TLC in realtorspeak). They are ideal for modernization. When all else fails, any ramshackle house can be called welcoming.
Realtors are not alone in developing their own euphemistic vocabulary, of course. Every occupational group does. How could it be otherwise? As our sense of community declines and work has become more central in our lives, the vocational groups we belong to have grown in importance as tribes. Like any tribe worthy of the name, these groups develop an insider nomenclature heavy with euphemisms. As my young son noticed while commuting to day care with his mother, when the train they were on didn’t move for an extended period of time, conductors would announce that this was an unscheduled stop. (“Maybe there’s a derailment up the line,” he’d say to his mother.)
Like coworkers, members of professional groups have their own euphemistic terminology. Among circus clowns, too much spaghetti describes a gag that’s limp and unfocused. Unicyclists don’t fall off their vehicle but now and again do have unplanned dismounts. Museum directors would never be avaricious enough to “sell” a work of art but do sometimes deaccession them. Among museum curators, tombstones refers to the block of copy that includes title, date, creator, and so on, next to items on display.
Like museum employees and circus clowns, police officers have a vocabulary all their own. One who grips you tightly by your shoulder and wrist has you in what members of this profession call an escort hold. If you resist, that officer can, in police lingo, upgrade to joint manipulation, a counterjoint hold that involves bending the wrist toward the elbow. Ideally, this results in pain compliance.
If these euphemisms sound like warrior words, that’s no coincidence. There is much overlap between the nomenclature of police officers and that of soldiers. As with any other vocational group, members of the military rely on a rarefied argot rich in euphemisms, many of which were born on the battlefield.
9
Words of War
UNTIL LATE IN the Civil War, William Tecumseh Sherman was regarded as a loose cannon, unfit for high command. One reason this Union general wasn’t given significant commands was that he was so outspoken. Sherman made little effort to mince words when discussing his occupation. He compared war to a monster that “demands its victims.” Sherman referred to “the piles of dead and wounded and maimed” and said that “Those who die by the bullet are lucky compared to those poor fathers and wives and children who see their all taken and themselves left to perish, or linger out their few years in ruined poverty.” Although he may never have said “War is hell,” Sherman did say “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.” About war he concluded, “Its glory is all moonshine.”
Sherman was way off message. In his time, military officers were supposed to extol honor, valor, and heroism. As late as 1898, when Teddy Roosevelt charged up San Juan Hill (more of a plain, actually) during the Spanish-American War, it was still possible for Secretary of State John Hay to call Roosevelt’s act part of “a splendid little war.”
This approach to armed conflict did not survive the First World War. The carnage of extended trench warfare was in no way splendid, valiant, or glorious. Midway through this conflict, Britain’s prime minister, David Lloyd George, observed that if noncombatants knew how horrible war really was, if it were ever depicted accurately, they’d insist it come to an end. But, he added, this would never happen. Warring parties have too much invested in surrounding the harsh realities of combat with clouds of verbal fog. That fog grew especially thick between 1914 and 1918.
The Great War
When Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914, the British consul cabled London that Ferdinand had been killed “by means of an explosive nature.”
This elliptical language proved to be a harbinger. The four-year war that followed Ferdinand’s assassination was so barbaric that a genteel vocabulary was conjured to obscure what was actually going on. If ever horrific events demanded bland words, it was during the Great War. The mass slaughter taking place on its battlefields and in its trenches simply could not be depicted in ordinary, clear language. Verbal camouf
lage was called for and supplied. Engagements with the enemy that resulted in lots of casualties were called sharp or brisk by Allied spokesmen. During a period when seven thousand British soldiers were killed or wounded daily, Britain’s general staff referred to the “wastage” of their forces. After French soldiers mutinied in 1917, their officers characterized the revolt as an act of “collective indiscipline.” British authorities at first told parents of executed soldiers that their sons’ fate was due to “acts prejudicial to military discipline” (desertion, usually). Even this circumlocution was considered a bit too candid, though, so from 1916 on, such parents were informed that their executed child had “died of wounds.”
In the trenches, British soldiers drew on their renowned capacity for understatement. The bloodshed around them was “ ‘darned unpleasant,’ they wrote home, “ ‘Rather nasty,’ or, if very bad, simply ‘damnable.’ ” The ambiguous term mop up, for killing or capturing lingering enemy soldiers after a successful operation, became common during World War I. The machine guns both sides used to mow each other down were called sewing machines by Allied soldiers because their chatter resembled that of Singer’s appliance. Pilots perfecting the new arts of aerial warfare called “bomb dropping” laying eggs. And so it went.
When discussing such terminology in The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell suggests that World War I gave birth not only to the modern euphemisms of war but also to euphemistic public discourse in general. “It would be going too far to trace the impulse behind all modern official euphemism to the Great War alone,” Fussell concedes. “And yet there is a sense in which public euphemism as the special rhetorical sound of life in the latter third of the twentieth century can be said to originate in the years 1914 to 1918. It was perhaps the first time in history that official policy produced events so shocking, bizarre, and stomach-turning that the events had to be tidied up for presentation to a highly literate mass population.”