Trope-a-Day: Deadly Euphemism

Alistair Young

Sep 11, 2012 — 1 min read

Deadly Euphemism: Outside certain specialized and arguable applications, the Imperials don’t really go in for euphemisms. Some of their terms sound a bit like euphemisms, but “erased” reflects the technical difference between cognicide and corpicide – namely, that you have to kill people in the information-theoretic sense (see: Final Death) if you expect them to stay dead, and just killing the body won’t help you much. It’s more like sending a really strongly worded message.

Likewise on a bigger scale, use of the term “cauterize” to describe an operation is entirely literal. Were you to see what a deployed antimatter bomb does to its target, I think you would have to agree that it is, indeed, pretty damn cauterized.

And while for perfectly obvious reasons no-one can now say “this is not war, this is pest control”, that wouldn’t be a euphemism either.

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