No subject

[urdang]

I shall probably be chided for redundancy, but I have 
seen no comment on the trend over the past decade or so among medical personnel (phlebotomists, nurses, dentists, etc.) in the northeast to warn a patient of the imminent insertion of a hypodermic needle in the arm, gums, or 
elsewhere with the words, "This may pinch a little." 
Of course it isn't going to pinch, which means 'grip or seize between two fingers, jaws of a pair of pliers,' 'cause pain using a constricting force,' and the like: the proper word is prick, but that is avoided because it is the slang word for 'penis.' A more accurate euphemism might be stick, but I 
have never heard that.
Perhaps observers in other parts of the US have encountered other euphemisms.
I haven't checked every dictionary, but those newer 
ones I looked in do not cover this sense.
L. Urdang
Old Lyme, CT