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By Tom Wilkinson
Host and founder of Thinking in English, Tom is committed to providing quality and interesting content to all English learners. Previously a research student at a top Japanese university and with a background in English teaching, political research, and Asian languages, Tom is now working fulltime on bettering Thinking in English!
This episode was informative for me to learn the terminology that we come across in our daily use of english. Your bonus episodes are particularly super detailed, niche and interesting as usual. When I think about ephemism, the first thing sprang to my mind is ” couch potato”. Its funny and genius to define the laziness. Yet, these idiomatic expresssions show lingustic creativity and humor of the languge. However, I am still not sure, if using this literary art is that kind and sincere -considering transparency and honesty- as a way of expressing unwanted words or thoughts. Yet, in some contexts, that they can even be beating around the bush instead of clear communication.
We tend to use euphemisms in situations where we want to be a little more polite and less “blunt” in our language. The perfect examples are euphemisms to do with “death” – phrases like “passed away” are much more gentle than “died”
Yes, being kind and thoughtful are the necessary reasons to use them.