metaphor

[desmith]

Euphemisms can surely be constructed in all kinds of ways.  They mark, surely, the what-cannot-be-said explicitly in a given setting and are probably systematic.  Eg the use of terms like washroom, restroom, toilet and so on belong with a system of avoidances of explicit reference bodily functions--some of which can't be mentioned at all in some settings, eg. fart, flatulence, and so on.  May Douglas's PURITY AND DANGER would have useful suggestions about the systemic properties of euphemisms, though she doesn't address that topic directly.   Her argument, with its wonderful analysis of the book of Leviticus, is, very briefly, that social order relies on exclusions of the specifically contradictory. The latter are the dangers.  Euphemisms suppress potential dangers.  Specific references to someone's needing right then to defecate or pee draw attention to what Erving Goffman called the 'backstage' or perhaps better brings the backstage out front, thereby destroying the illusions that those present had been participating in.   Some euphemisms seem to be synecdoches--washroom and toilet for example.  Restroom seems, on the other hand, a downright fabrication since so far as I know restrooms are seldom places for resting.  Perhaps once they were and the term has lost it referential and hence synecdochic character.  Euphemisms around death too, such as 'passing away'  which seems to be constructed quite differently--there may be a buried metaphor here.   Then the word 'defecate' I used above is, perhaps? a euphemism constructed by using a term of Latin origin rather than the 'vulgar' (of the crowd) term 'shit.' .  Surely euphemisms cannot be defined apart from the avoidance of a more directly referential term that, in a given setting, is dangerous in Douglas's sense,  and may be formed in many ways.  

Metaphor I think is something else again--the substitution of attributes or features on the basis that they resemble one another.  Maybe metaprhos involve some sleight-of-hand or sleight-of-word here.  A term like 'structure' for example sneaks into theory the properties of a building--permanent, distinct, a definite arrangement of parts, an ordering, and so on.  Its metaphoric character is scarcely visible but once installed it transmits its bundle of properties into its new setting,  opening things up but just as surely closing other things down.  

Could we say that euphemisms exclude and metaphors import?