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Euphemism is one of the most fundamental and important items of rhetoric in English. I t roots in Greek words eu and pheme. In order to avoid some obverse conflicts and unnecessary misunderstandings, we often use some mild and dark words instead of the rude and forbidden ones. This is a figure of speech that can achieve an implied and tactful purpose. Euphemism is a common skill that we used both in English and Chinese, especially when our friends and relations suffer from disaster, death, illness or some other sorrows, we usually use certain mild and implied words to express ourselves but not the direct and abrupt ones.本论文由英语论文网 www.51lunwen.org整理提供

The birth of euphemism can be related to the taboo words in religion. Priest created some tactful names to call gods but not call their real names. As the development of language, euphemism spread a little wide, many words about death, birth and sex are used euphemism to express. Such as, we can say “ go away” means death, “ come into the world” means birth, “business” means sexual love. In history, it appeared many talents in using euphemism and their works are known by almost all of the people in the world, for example, Shakespeare, the most famous player in Britain. Nowadays, euphemism spreads rapidly and the usage of it spread to many other aspects such as politics, military, science, literary and art.

The social function of euphemism can be divided into three aspects: function for taboo, function for cover and function for politeness.

1. Function for taboo.

We have known that euphemism roots in the respectableness to gods in religion. Later on, euphemism spread to many aspects. When we say something about death and senescent, birth and sex, pregnant and delivery, prostitute and seduction, sexual actions and sexual organs, we cannot say them out directly but only to use certain tactful words to instead. This kind of words has been used widely up to now. Today, people also created more taboo euphemism. We can mainly divided them into three sorts:

1) Death and old age

Such as “to pass away, to depart, to go to sleep, to go to heaven, to go to one’s last, to go to a better place, to be at rest, to be at peace, to be with God, to be in Heaven, to be with the angels, to take the easy way out, to lay down one’s life, the final summons: getting on (in years), past one’s age prime, feeling one’s age second childhood, senior, citizens, golden years, longer living, well preserved, seasoned experienced” and so on.

2) Birth and sexual love本论文由英语论文网 www.51lunwen.org整理提供

Such as “to come into the world, delicate condition, taken ill., the lady-in-waiting, love-begotten, a love brat, business, action, love-making, balling the Jack, larks in the night, belly high, in one’s birthday suit, a chicken, a companion, to make eyes at, a street girl, the oldest profession” and so on.

3) Diseases and disasters

Such as “social disease, a growth. Self-deliverance, Self-violence, old Newton took him, happy dispatch, to be blown across the creek and so on. There is no easy to ignore that taboo function of euphemism has a firm status in people’s mind.本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。