[Ads-l] "a nice name for a nasty thing"

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue Apr 12 18:04:55 UTC 2016


Can anyone help me track down the first use of this definition of euphemism?  Google hits on the phrase are amazingly scanty--just four, including this as the earliest:

The Observer March 9, 1939 Page 1

"Birth control is a nice name for a nasty thing"

(In the left column--well, physically left, anyway--just under the story about the heroic victory of the Spanish people, under the steady guidance of Generalissimo Franco with a little help from his friends, over the "foul and fell foes of the Spanish and Catholic name")  

But this usage seems to presuppose an earlier common ground in which the phrase is standardly used to characterize euphemism.  Garson? Anyone?

LH
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