21 April 2009

"Monkeyfighting" as a euphemism


In the televised version of "Snakes on a Plane," Samuel L. Jackson rallies the passengers to confront the "monkeyfighting" snakes on the "MondaytoFriday" plane.

Wikipedia notes that the origins of creating euphemisms [Gk: eu=good, pheme=speech], arose not from avoiding sexual terms, but to avoid using the names of deities or other religious terms.

There are also "dysphemes," which, like "blasphemes" has an opposite connotation.

Lots of interesting discussion and explanation* at the links, which I won't reproduce here because you have the ability to click if you're interested.

Lists of obscure euphemisms are listed at Urban Dictionary, wulfweard, Yahoo Answers, and many other places; they are not particularly useful because so many are local usages or evanescent neologisms.

*apparently the popularity of the Monty Python series has resulted in the phrase "pining for the fjords" being used as a euphemism for "dead."

2 comments:

  1. My favorite is the TV version of The Big Lebowski going with "this is what happens when you meet a stranger in the alps"

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was a little off... there it is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQUdJ6FdUQ0

    ReplyDelete

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