How English Greases Daily Life

Euphemisms are social lubricants.

Euphemisms camouflage the unspeakable into expressions that do not cause offense to others.

That’s the reason we hesitate to describe someone as “disabled” anymore. Instead, we now call the person “differently abled.”

Euphemisms are the price we pay to live in civilized society.

For some bizarre reason, considering its inevitability for everyone, people are loath to use the word “died” or “death” and dress it up in so many euphemisms.

So there are dozens of euphemisms for death. Some of them are respectful but several wildly cheeky: departed, passed away, six feet under, gone to rest, returned to God, system shut down, 404:person not found, taking a dirt nap, Ctrl+Alt+Del’d by God, Elvis has left the building, joined the angels, worm food now, kicked the bucket, sleeps with the fishes, switched to skeleton mode, croaked, checked out, unalived, got deleted, pushing up the daisies, account terminated, bought the farm, logged out for good, game over, took a one-way ride, gone to the great beyond, yeeted into the void, permanently horizontal, kicked the oxygen habit, and no longer vibing are a few examples of euphemisms for “died” or “death.”

The most amusing one seems to be 404:person not found, a play on the 404: page cannot be found error message we get when a web page cannot be found.

Just yesterday, I stumbled upon another interesting euphemism relating to “death” in Salman Rushdie‘s new book, The Eleventh Hour, a collection of short stories.

In the fourth story, Oklahoma, Rushdie, citing an NYT article on a plane crash off Long Island, writes that the newspaper used “peculiar euphemisms” to explain why the drowned victims were hard to identify. Apparently, identification of the victims was hard because of “marine life intervention” or “radical marine intervention.”

Explaining the euphemisms, Rushdie writes, “In plain English, the fish ate their faces.”

Now let’s take a dekko at some other interesting euphemisms.

• Sexual Entertainment Venues: strip club
  Example: “The number of licensed clubs, formally known as sexual entertainment venues (SEVs), in England and Wales has dropped from around 350 in the early 2000s to some 150 today.” - The Economist, August 9, 2025, p.47
• Rooster: I was surprised to learn recently that rooster originated as an euphemism when some people in the eighteenth century became reluctant to use the word cock.
  Example: "In mixed company in the eighteenth century nice people didn't want to say "cock," so they started calling the males "roosters." - Source: Bang the Drumstick slowly, by Ian Frazier, New York Book Review, February 12, 2026, p.18
• Passed away: died
  Example: Ravikishore’s father passed away on Monday in his sleep.
• Collateral damage: unintended harm
  Example: The ongoing Iran war has inflicted enormous collateral damage to school children in Tehran.
• Kicked the bucket: died
  Example: Gopal’s uncle Deepak Mehta kicked the bucket last week.
• Low publications: Victorian-era euphemism for pornographic text and pictures
  Example: Hollywell Street in nineteenth-century London was a thriving center for booksellers peddling low publications.
• Domestic engineer: housewife or househusband
  Example: Rita calls herself a domestic engineer because she manages the household with care.
• Chemical dependency: drug addiction
  Example: Dhirendra Kapoor was admitted to a detox center in Pune to treat his chemical dependency issues.
• Extermination Engineer: rat-catcher
  Example: After landing a job at the Ranchi Municipal Corporation as a rat-catcher, Manish printed a business card describing his job title as Extermination Engineer.
• Sexually ambidextrous: bisexual
  Example: It’s hard to make out sexually ambidextrous people just from their dressing.
• Pregnancy termination: abortion
  Example: To avoid running into any known people, Sharmila went to a neighboring town for her pregnancy termination.
• Plus-Size: clothing for people of larger-than-average size
  Example: In the clothing and fashion sectors, plus-size is an euphemism for clothing for fat people or sizes above the standard range.
• Let go: fired from a job
  Example: Gopal was let go by his IT company for playing Pacman during work hours.
• Eats a lot: hogs like a pig
  Example: Manisha tends to eat a lot at South Indian buffets.
• Restroom: toilet
  Example: These days I’m starting to see more unisex restrooms in shopping malls.
• Correctional Facility: prison
  Ram Shankar Billa spent five years in the Tihar correctional facility for car-theft.
• Nonmarital children: bastards
  Example: After Damodar’s death, we found that he had five nonmarital children.
• Economical with the truth: lying or telling half-truths
  Example: It’s hard to find a politician who’s not economical with the truth.
• In the family way: pregnant
  Example: Meena is in the family way and expects to have twins.
• Under the weather: feeling unwell, being sick
  Example: Ravi is feeling under the weather today after his drinking binge last night.
• Between jobs: unemployed
  Example: Gopal is between jobs now after his mining contract in Johannesburg ended.
• Senior Citizen: elderly person
  Example: Senior citizens get discounted tickets in Delhi public transport.
• Bustarella: Italian euphemism for a bribe
  Example: The contractor had to pay a bustarella to the local Mafia to get his $250 million road project approved.
• Rightsizing: Layoffs disguised as strategy
  Example: The Silicon Valley startup that laid off Dheeraj and 25 others explained it as a rightsizing strategy aimed at achieving early profitability.