Ambiguous Euphemisms

Posted under A Geek Dad's Life, Blog Posts

I was remembering an old euphemism that a former TV sportscaster colleague of mine used once while a group of us were sitting around the newsroom back in 1993.  (Chris Byers, stop Googling yourself and get back to work.) The phrase was not dirty or obscene; it was elegant and genius.  This phrase was hilariously appropriate for the moment, and the beauty of the phrase was that you needed considerable knowledge of the subject to discern to what the euphemism was referring.  Otherwise, it was just a series of harmless words strung together in a funny-sounding sentence.

That got me thinking about what it might be like to not understand the euphemisms used by other people.  They might sound funny, but what if I didn’t know to what they actually referred?  Here are some examples. 

Try each by saying the following phrase:  With exasperation, say “We’re ready to leave, but he’s still in there…”

• “Stringing up the ham.”
• “Gassing up the zamboni.”
• “Working on his credit.”
• “Erasing his scorecard.”
• “Talking to the albatross.”
• “Lifting the house off the witch.”
• “Cleaning the brickwork.”
• “Driving the nuns to school.”

Try them and see how your friends react.  My prediction is that your friends will laugh at your amusing new euphemisms, but also that 7 out of 10 of your friends will not challenge you on the origin or validity of the phrases.  Let me know how it goes!