The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #167564   Message #4043799
Posted By: meself
03-Apr-20 - 11:22 AM
Thread Name: BS: Can someone tell me.......(euphemizing hell)
Subject: RE: BS: Can someone tell me.......
There is a danger of sounding rather pompous when casting judgement on the language-usage of others, especially of those in geographical, social, or generational regions not your own. What in one regional context is clearly a euphemism may in another just be a more-or-less neutral, common word; i.e., the speaker is not deliberately using it to replace an objectionable word. So to suggest that, for instance, if someone uses 'gosh' or 'darn' it is because they are too prissy to say, 'God' or 'damn' reflects either limited experience or limited imagination. In all likelihood, the speaker of these 'euphemisms' has no urge to say 'God' or 'damn' - they probably grew up with 'gosh' and 'darn' in the familial and local vernacular and simply carried on the speech they had grown up with. If they were to expunge 'gosh' and 'darn' from their lexicon and replace them with 'God' and 'damn', it would be through deliberate effort - why should they bother? So someone on the internet won't sneer at them?