Terminological inexactitude Terminological inexactitude Terminological inexactitude is a phrase introduced in 1906 by British politician Winston Churchill. Today, it is used as a euphemism or circumlocution meaning a lie or untruth. Churchill first used the phrase following the 1906 election. Speaking in the House of Commons on 22 February 1906 as Under-Secretary of the Colonial Office, he had occasion to repeat what he had said during the campaign. When asked that day whether the Government was condoning slavery of Chinese labourers in the Transvaal, Churchill replied: It has been used as a euphemism for a lie in the House of Commons, as
Euphemism by Harvard professor Steven Pinker. For instance, "toilet" is an 18th-century euphemism, replacing the older euphemism "house-of-office", which in turn replaced the even older euphemisms "privy-house" and "bog-house". In the 20th century, where the words "lavatory" or "toilet" were deemed inappropriate (e.g. in the United States), they were sometimes replaced with "bathroom" or "water closet", which in turn became "restroom", "W.C.", or "washroom". The word "shit" appears to have originally been a euphemism for defecation in Pre-Germanic, as the Proto-Indo-European root *"sḱeyd-", from which it was derived, meant "to cut off". Euphemisms are at risk of being misunderstood and used