Monday, November 12, 2012

Is urine really like brie, provolone and cheddar?

I have long been fascinated by euphemisms.
  • Some euphemisms, like "gay," have become so common that the earlier use of the word has largely ended.
  • Some euphemisms seem nastier than the words they replace. "Son of a bitch" was devised to replace "dog" -- a horrible epithet in England. In the USA, "bitch" is a bad word, unless you're talking about a female dog.
  • Some euphemisms, like "SOB" and "son of a B," are euphemisms for other euphemisms.
  • Some euphemisms are just plain confusing.
"Pissed off" is common American slang for "really annoyed." Some people find the reference to the ubiquitous yellow liquid unpleasant and avoid the phrase even if they can't avoid the sentiment. One common euphemism uses what may be an abbreviation: "P'd off" -- but maybe it's really "pee'd off, using a gentler synonym of "piss."

We also have people who move one generation farther away, using a rhyming euphemism for the the gentler synonym. They say "tee'd off" instead of "pee'd off." Would Tiger Woods be tee'd off if someone else tee'd off at Tiger's tee time?
  • And then we get to the really silly euphemisms like "ticked-off," "torqued-off," and the silliest of all:

The Brits, who drive on the wrong side of the road and gave us the classic "son of a bitch," use "piss-off" not to mean "annoy" or "bother," but as a gentler alternative to "fuck-off" or "get the hell out of here."

Euphemism fans, slang aficionados and more generalized language geeks will enjoy Euphemania by Ralph Keyes. I learned things on almost every page. Ralph claims that Midwesterners say "sack" instead of "bag" because they perceive "bag" as slang for "scrotum." Folks in the northeast, where "sack" (nut sack) may mean "scrotum," feel safe with "bag."

I'm not sure if Ralph is right about this, but it's interesting to contemplate. Southerners avoid both "bag" and "sack" by saying "poke."

Y'all be careful now. Don't you be buyin' no pig in a poke. Y'hear?

And men, don't get poked in your bag, or your sack.

And speaking of "nut sacks," I'd long suspected that the "heavenly coffee" Chock full o' Nuts got its name because someone was reluctant to call it "full of beans," although coffee is made from beans, not nuts.

Alas, I was wrong. It turns out that the company's founder William Black opened a nut shop in Manhattan in 1926, and later started selling coffee but used the nut shop's name on the coffee.

When I was in junior high school, we verbally combined the two images above to produce "jock full of nuts."

CLICK for more about the coffee and NYC history.


Brie photo from Southport Grocery & Cafe. Urine sample photo from Mountainside Medical Equipment. Jockstrap photo from Calvin Klein. I thank them.

1 comment:

  1. Pissed off came from the fact that drunk men in bars would often decide to go pee when they realized they'd lost a fight or a pool or dart game. So, they'd say he was off to take a piss, thus, pissed off.

    So, if you wanted someone to leave you alone, you naturally said, "piss off." And we naturally assume that someone who is angry is pissed off.

    I just made that up.