"This may pinch a little"

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:38 AM -0400 6/22/05, sagehen wrote:
>  >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
>~<~<~<~<~<~<~<
>This is very much older than the past decade or so.  I heard it as a child
>before WWII.  I assumed then that it was meant to liken the minor pain to
>one that any child would be familiar with: that of being pinched.  Of
>course it seemed increasingly absurd as I got older and kept hearing it
>addressed to older & older adults (e.g., me).  "Prick" might well be
>avoided for the reasons you give, but  "this'll hurt, but it'll be quick"
>would serve the purpose.
>A. Murie

I'm not really sure that "prick" would be the appropriate verb, even
in the absence of taboo avoidance, nor is "stick" really germane,
since what the administrator of the hypodermic is really referring to
here is not his/her action (which is indeed pricking, sticking,
whatever) but its effect on the patient.  Of course the agent is
pricking/sticking the patient, but the point is to assure the patient
about the effect on him or her, so if "pinch" (or "sting") is a
euphemism for anything, it's for "hurt", not for "prick".  If the
doctor or whoever were to say "I'm going to pinch you a little",
*that* might be more plausibly regarded as a euphemism for "prick",
but "This may pinch a little" doesn't really seem to stand in for
"This may prick a little", which seems a bit off semantically, even
disregarding the taboo.

Larry