"vulgar euphemism" (cf "uterus" & "slut")

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

I first noticed this one in the Washington Times report of George W Bush's description of the NYT's Adam Clymer as a "major-league asshole," which inadvertently went over the mic at a campaign event in 2000:

Mounting a stage in Naperville, Ill., Mr. Bush spied among those gathered a reporter for the New York Times whom he regards as hostile to his campaign and said to Mr. Cheney: "There's Adam Clymer - a major-league [deleted]," employing a vulgar euphemism for a rectal aperture.

"Vulgar euphemism" get around 1000 (true) Google hits, a number from the media or books, and Nexis turns up 40+ from press stories.

In fact one can readily appreciate the probable origin of the Old Dutch word " snot,"; avulgar euphemism for nasal secretion.

Her intent, I believe, was probably to replace the words "get and over" with the vulgar euphemism for making love. ...

I absolutely hate the four letter c words: can't and the one that is a vulgar euphemism for the female body part that sounds like can't ...

...flush the [vulgar euphemism] that has thus far characterized Minnesota's season down the tubes and we'll call it a year. St Paul Pioneer Press

...a dumb [vulgar euphemism for female anatomy mercifully redacted]. Weekly Standard

Of course there can be a genuine vulgar euphemism, particularly if "vulgar" has the older sense of "Having a common and offensively mean character; coarsely commonplace"; e.g., 'frig', 'effing', 'the dickens'. It's appropriately used in a Queensland Sunday Mail story: "Crap has a few meanings but, in my neck of the woods, it is largely a vulgar euphemism for an even more vulgar word." (The 1911 Century Dictionary describes "sample room" as a vulgar euphemism for bar-room.) But the eg's above suggest a reanalysis of 'euphemism' as "synonym," with some added element of meaning that I can't quite discern.

"Obscene euphemism" is out there, too, often applied to phrases like "extraordinary rendition," with a different sense of 'obscene', but also in eg's like:

 The f-word was originally employed as a substitute for "swiving," an old English term that functioned as a obscene euphemism for sex.  Atlanta Journal and Constitution

Geoff

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