Canada’s military has announced that a naval base in northern Baffin Island would 'transition … out of operational usage' - or, as most people would describe it, the site will be closed and maybe sold.Department of National Defence/Supplied
There’s an epidemic of language meant to conceal rather than illuminate. Whether it’s a “temporary service interruption” that actually indicates the ER is closed, or soft-glossing a mining disaster as a “challenge,” or quantifying the “harvest” at a slaughterhouse – sorry, processing plant – words are wielded to obscure reality.
Just last week, Canada’s military announced that a naval base in northern Baffin Island would “transition … out of operational usage,” followed by a possible “divestment process.” Or, as most people would describe it: the site will be closed and maybe sold.
Eighty years after George Orwell wrote his famous essay about the debasement of the English language, and its effects on politics, euphemism is strangling the meaning out of official communications.
This sort of tortured language has a painfully long etymology. “Collateral damage,” as a way to describe civilian deaths in war, dates at least to 1961. “Downsizing” replaced layoffs, and was itself replaced by “right-sizing.”
However, slippery rhetoric is on a slippery slope, and now seems to be everywhere. The result is less clarity, and a less informed population.
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This criticism could be dismissed as mere crankiness from one side of the ongoing joust between public officials and journalists. But the truth is that euphemisms can have real, and corrosive, effects.
“Employing euphemistic labels … reduces the perceived severity of moral transgressions and, as a result, also reduces third-party motivations to punish transgressors,” note the authors of a 2025 paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
This is why the United States called its efforts to wring information out of suspected terrorists “enhanced interrogation.” Torture is what bad people do. Other people.
Another study, published in 2015 in the Journal of Business Ethics, found that people were more likely to perceive an improper action as appropriate when stated euphemistically. For example, paying a “soft commission” rather than a bribe.
Of course, some distinctions must be drawn here.
A desire for clarity in language is not an excuse to stray into dysphemisms. These are deliberately aggressive phrasings, the hard-edged alter egos of euphemisms. Think “kicked the bucket” instead of died or “got the axe” for losing a job.
And it must be acknowledged that, at their most benign, euphemisms can soothe a difficult situation. Someone whose loved one has died may appreciate the term “passed away.” A pet owner may prefer the thought of their companion being “put to sleep.”
But that is not what is the issue here. Politicians do not rely on euphemism to be polite. They do it to deflect attention from what is actually happening. “Unlocking the value” of a public asset is code for selling it. Meanwhile, public spending is invariably framed as “an investment,” even if there is no plausible chance of, you know, an investment return.
Avoiding the plain truth can seem appealing, though will sometimes backfire rather spectacularly.
SpaceX referring to one of its own rockets blowing up as having experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly” sounds ghoulish rather than discreet. Planning the “complete depopulation” of a herd of ostriches in British Columbia over bird flu concerns somehow rings even more harshly than just saying “we’ll shoot them.”
Such missteps will not stop officials from continuing to try to misdirect and mislead through euphemism, though. They will do it because they believe it works for them. It’s up to everyone else to make sure it doesn’t.
The media has its own role to play, because sometimes it is part of the problem. For example, echoing a police press release about an “officer-involved shooting” is not helpful. Common sense offers a simpler description: police shot a person. The story about such an incident should be written in real language. Say what actually happened.
In his essay, Orwell acknowledges that trying to improve English usage can seem “a sentimental archaism.” But he urges people to stand up for plain language: “From time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase … or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin where it belongs.”
The public should demand to know the bare truth, rather than a word salad of euphemism. The battle against the abuse of language is not sentimental, it is necessary.