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How Not To Say What You Mean:
A Dictionary of Euphemisms
(3rd Edition)
R.W. Holder
Oxford University Press
Oxford
2002
xx + 501 pp.
ISBN 0 19 860402 5
L9.99
Keyword English language
Review DOI 10.1108/09504120310473498
This fascinating and diverting dictionary has a fairly complex publishing history. It was first published in 1987 by Bath University Press as A Dictionary of British and American Euphemisms, with a revised edition published by Faber and Faber in 1989. A second edition was published by Oxford University Press in 1995 as A Dictionary of Euphemisms, with a paperback version in 1996. Now we have a third edition, and a third title, from what remains the third publisher. One constant remains: in its codification and explanation of what is often the darker underbelly of the language it provides amusement and instruction in equal and very considerable measures. It is always a pleasure to come across reference books which prove to be as enjoyable as many a more straightforward text - and often more so; this ranks high in those stakes.
The subject matter of course tends to be of high amusement value to start with: the myriad, sometimes witty, sometimes grim, sometimes absurd ways in which we try to gloss over unpleasant, embarrassing or just plain disgusting aspects of life. And of death: many of the terms included deal with different ways of expressing death or dying or events surrounding them. We might mock some expressions - or the attitudes, which bred them -...