The word snoop - Ursula Dubosarsky 2009

Doublespeak
Hmm i wonder what you’re really saying

There’s another sort of euphemism sometimes known as doublespeak. It comes about not from kindness or embarrassment, but from the need to hide the truth, or make something that’s not very appealing sound better.

This happens a lot when people are buying and selling. Look at advertisements in the newspaper or on the Internet. Pre-loved means anything secondhand. A historic property could mean a house that’s so old it’s falling to pieces. And let’s face it, nice leafy garden sounds better than “previous owner planted huge patch of lettuces.”

Doublespeak is particularly useful when something has gone wrong and nobody wants to admit it. For example, if the school cafeteria was robbed overnight and all the food was stolen, the principal might stand up in assembly and say, “Unfortunately the cafeteria will not be opening today owing to an unexpected lack of supplies.” After all, nobody wants to admit to leaving the door to the cafeteria unlocked, do they?

Charles Dickens wrote about the dark side of this sort of euphemism in his novel Little Dorrit.In Little Dorrit,there’s a terrible place called the “Circumlocution Office,” where no one ever says what they really mean. Circumlocutio is Latin for “roundabout speech”—that is, saying something with so many words that it’s difficult to tell what’s actually being said. This kind of euphemism was made fun of in the 1980s British television series Yes Minister,which was about a government office where people used a lot of words to make sure nobody could understand them. For example, if a character said The matter is under consideration,what they really meant was “we’ve lost the file.” (If they said The matter is under active consideration, it meant they were desperately trying to find the file!)

Have a look at the statements on the next page issued by a modern-day Circumlocution Office. Can you figure out what on earth they’re trying to tell you? (Hint: They are well-known proverbs.)

Doublespeak

1. A piece of round red or green tree fruit that is commonly used in pies served with ice cream if ingested once every twenty-four hours will ensure that the medical practitioner remains at a distance.

2. Refrain from enumerating the offspring of your hens prior to their exit from the eggshell.