Friday, August 26, 2005

Soldiers are discharged. People in the workplace are fired. Servants are let go. Terminal relationships are terminated.

Of all these euphemisms Really only one does the job. I mean since a euphemism is an expression intended to be less offensive, disturbing, or troubling to the recipient than the word or phrase it replaces.
“Discharge” is never good. I’m not even willing to go into that…ewwwe
“Fired” only has one meaning, one connotation; much like discharge, it isn’t all that pleasant. “Terminated”? Wait that’s not even a euphemism. Maybe they aren’t euphemisms. I can’t be sure. I know “let go” must be. It does the euphemistic job. Of all of those “let go” sounds the least troubling. It's almost passive. I was holding on to you, but then I let go. Okay maybe it was at the mouth of a bottomless cavern but it still sounds nicer, less invasive I guess. It's also the only euphemism used for death that seems to find a use outside the macabre arena. Yes I think that qualifies it as a euphemism.

Now if you’ll excuse me I think I’ll go install the Kevorkian Plug-n-Play to my work so I can go home

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