15 Euphemisms for Terrible Things, Explained

‘Relaxed in person’ does not refer to a day at the spa.
Beware of that invitation to tea.
Beware of that invitation to tea. | diane555/DigitalVision Vectors/Getty Images

Euphemisms—tactful words and phrases used in place of less pleasant ones—have been employed as rhetorical and literary devices for centuries. (The word is derived from the Greek for “good-speaking.”) Early examples included old epithets and bynames employed to avoid using the names of deities in conversation, while the Ancient Greeks themselves had a penchant for euphemistically referring to anything on the left-hand side, or heading in a leftward direction, as eunymos (“well-named”) because it was believed that the left was unlucky and ill-omened.

In less superstitious contexts, euphemisms allow us to discuss some grim or controversial topics employing a more palatable turn of phrase. The 15 expressions below were coined throughout history to disguise everything from capital punishments to diseases, death, slavery, and cannibalism. 

  1. Abraham’s Balsam
  2. Baby Farming
  3. Break a Leg
  4. Covent Garden Gout
  5. Everlasting Suit
  6. Financially Embarrassed
  7. To Find Cook County
  8. An Invitation to Tea
  9. Lithobreaking
  10. Long Pig
  11. Montezuma’s Revenge
  12. Old Sparky
  13. Peculiar Institution
  14. Regretful Climb
  15. Relaxado en Persona

Abraham’s Balsam

Glimpses Of Old Newgate - Interior Of Scaffold
The gallows at Newgate Prison. | Heritage Images/GettyImages

Balsam is the aromatic resinous substance produced by certain plants that has soothing and healing properties. So Abraham’s balsam must refer to some blessed or biblically sourced cure-all, right?

Not quite. The term, which dates back to the 19th century, is a euphemism for death by hanging. It’s punning both on the biblical use of Abraham’s bosom (or the Bosom of Abraham) as a byword for the place the dead await redemption, and the Vitex or chaste tree, which was also once known as “Abraham’s balm” given its many medicinal properties.   

Baby Farming

One of the darkest chapters of Victorian history was the practice of baby farming: Desperate mothers of unwanted or illegitimate children would give their infants away to other women, who would then receive a fee or regular stipend to cover the cost and effort of raising them.

Some supposed foster mothers saw the practice as nothing more than a money-making exercise, and would intentionally take custody of multiple children in exchange for cash. The care the children received, though, was often nonexistent (if not tantamount to abuse), and several women were found guilty of neglecting or even murdering the children in their custody. Some were executed for their crimes. The women who were found to have neglected the children in their care to the point of death became grimly known as angel-makers.


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Break a Leg

No, this isn’t the same exclamation of good luck offered to an actor before they go on stage. Break a leg was a 19th-century euphemism for becoming pregnant out of wedlock or, in reference to a man, fathering an unplanned child. Broken-leg referred to a single mother in Victorian English, while break a leg above the knee or break an elbow alluded to giving birth to an illegitimate child. (A woman who was said to have “broken her elbow in the church” proved an unfit housekeeper after getting married.)

These expressions appear to have emerged from or been inspired by older equivalents in French, but exactly what prompted such bizarre turns of phrase is unclear—although it has been suggested that all these breaking bones might allude to injuries incurred by a woman thrashing around in bed during childbirth. 

Covent Garden Gout

A Rakes Progress: Tavern Scene,
Illustration of a Covent Garden brothel. | Heritage Images/GettyImages

Covent Garden might be a cultural hub in central London today—it’s home to the world famous Royal Opera House—but the district hasn’t always had quite such a rosy reputation. In the 18th century, it was a hotspot for prostitution and upmarket brothels, and as a result, its name became immortalized in a number of related euphemisms, including Covent Garden gout or Covent Garden agueanother name for venereal disease. 

Everlasting Suit

Given how sensitive a subject it can be (and how superstitious some of us are), death is an understandably common subject of euphemistic language. Rather than talk about dying, for instance, we prefer to say instead that someone has “moved on” or “passed away” or “kicked the bucket,” or “bought the farm.” (Even the word deceased is something of a euphemism; pieced together from Latin roots literally meaning “to go” or “move away,” it was coined to replace any more overt reference to death.) The same is true even for some of the items associated with death: Everlasting suit—a skewed reference to the clothes a body is buried in—emerged in the early 1800s as another name for a coffin. 

Financially Embarrassed

Senior businessman with empty pocket
He’s financially embarrassed. | Peter Dazeley/GettyImages

We might be more familiar with the sense of embarrassment meaning “humiliation or shame,” but originally in English, embarrassed meant “to be hindered, impeded, or encumbered”; the word itself, in fact, is a distant etymological relative of words like bar and barrier. It’s this original sense of being held back by circumstances, rather than humiliated by them, that underpins the 19th-century euphemism financially embarrassed—a more pleasant way of saying that you have no money. 

To Find Cook County

Cook County, Illinois, is one of the most populous counties in the entire United States, and as such plays a significant role in the state’s electoral turnout. But in the 1960 presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, the county proved even more pivotal than usual.

After an intensely close-fought race, Cook County was eventually declared for Kennedy, overturning the Republican majority that had been returned in the previous two presidential elections; Kennedy went on to win Illinois by a margin of nearly 9000 votes. But amid rumors of questionable behavior by Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley, head of the Cook County Democratic Party, Nixon and his Republican Party machine became convinced that the Illinois result had been tampered with, and the election ultimately stolen—and the results in Cook County, which were declared late, fell under suspicion. To find Cook County, ultimately, has become a political euphemism for vote tampering and electoral fraud. 

An Invitation to Tea

Pretty Antique Teacups On Pink
In China, an invitation to tea isn’t a good thing. | Diane Labombarbe/GettyImages

On the surface, this is a perfectly pleasant proposition—and that’s kind of the point. In China, receiving an invitation to tea is a euphemistic way of being summoned for interrogation by the state police. 

Lithobreaking

A term coined and used in the aeronautics and space exploration industries, lithobraking is effectively crashlanding; the term derives from lithos, a Greek word for “rock” or “stone,” and so essentially implies applying the brakes on a remote space craft by letting it crash into whatever rocky body it has been sent to land upon [PDF]. 

Long Pig

The new 'Raft of the Medusa', 1899. Artist: F Meaulle
The new ‘Raft of the Medusa,’ 1899. | Print Collector/GettyImages

First recorded in English in the journals of travelers to the South Seas in the mid-19th century, long pig is an infamously grim euphemism for human flesh as a source of food. Etymologically, it’s said to be a literal translation of an old local Polynesian expression supposedly in use among the southern Pacific islands’ cannibalistic tribespeople; the Fijian phrase vuaka balavu in particular is often purported to be the origin of long pig, and is claimed to have been coined in opposition to puaka dina, or “real pig,” the local name for pork.

Given the era that this expression found its way into English, however, as well as the attitudes many Western explorers had towards non-Western cultures at that time, how accurate any of this truly is remains debatable. Nevertheless, the term has become established enough in our language to remain in (albeit fairly niche) use ever since. 

Montezuma’s Revenge

Montezuma II was the final ruler of the Aztec Empire. According to the Aztecs, he was murdered by the conquistador Hernán Cortés; according to the Spanish, he was slain by his own people when he suggested they submit to the Spanish colonists. Whatever the truth, Montezuma’s unhappy demise is the origin of the expression Montezuma’s revenge—a euphemism dating from the mid-1900s for a bout of diarrhea or an upset stomach experienced by tourists in Central and Latin America. (A similar complaint among travelers to Egypt, meanwhile, has become known as Pharaoh’s revenge.) 

Old Sparky

Postcard of Death Chamber in Ohio State Penitentiary
Ohio State Penitentiary’s electric chair. | Rykoff Collection/GettyImages

Old Sparky has been used as a euphemistic nickname for the electric chair in several U.S. states that still utilize it since the early 1970s at least. Not all states with capital punishment follow suit, though; Indiana referred to their electric chair as “Old Betsy,” and Louisiana’s was called “Gruesome Gertie.” 

Peculiar Institution

Peculiar institution was a term that emerged in the early 1800s as a southern American euphemism for slavery. The term is popularly credited to the vice president John C. Calhoun, who spoke of the South’s “peculiar labor” in 1828, and its “peculiar domestick institution” in 1830. Whether Calhoun himself coined the term is unclear, but it’s worth noting that in this context he did not intend peculiar to mean “unusual” or “bizarre,” but rather “unique to” or “characteristic of”; Calhoun himself, after all, was an outspoken defender of slavery. 

Regretful Climb

Execution by guillotine of Louis XVI of France, Paris, 21 January 1793 (1790s). Artist: Anon
Execution by guillotine of Louis XVI of France. | Print Collector/GettyImages

“Regretful Climb” is the English translation of the French Monte-à-Regret, which emerged first as a euphemism for the hangman’s gallows and then, during the French Revolution, as a nickname for the guillotine. The guillotine became the subject of a number of grisly euphemistic names amid the turmoil of the revolutionary era, among them Le Moulin à Silence (“The Mill of Silence”), Le Rasoir National (“The National Razor”), and, famously, La Raccourcisseuse Patriotique (“The Patriotic Shortener”). 

Relaxado en Persona

Trials of accused heretics during the days of the Spanish Inquisition typically ended in one of five different outcomes. Acquittals, typically on lack of sufficient evidence, reflected badly on the inquisitors and so were rare (and even rarely made public). If there were insufficient evidence, a suspension was more likely; in this case, the defendant was free to go but their charge could be reopened at any time, so they effectively remained under permanent suspicion. A guilty verdict, however, might lead to the defendant accepting penance, publicly admitting their crimes, and accepting a fine or relatively minor punishment such as exile or mandatory church attendance. Reconciliation went a step further, demanding the guilty party publicly rejoin the Catholic Church and accept a harsher punishment such as jail time, forced labor, property forfeiture, or even flogging.

Worst of all, though, was relaxation.

Despite its rather pleasant-sounding name, relaxation, in legal parlance, refers to the release of a prisoner from the legal process. In the context of the Inquisition, however, this meant handing over the prisoner to the Spanish secular authorities—who would then proceed to carry out their execution by burning them at the stake. (Those who repented before their execution were mercifully strangled first; those who did not were burned alive.) Because the church was not permitted to carry out death sentences, however, the victim would be euphemistically recorded in the Inquisition’s officially documents as relaxado en persona—literally, “relaxed in person.”

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