in the navy, and sick-leave is known in the army, though it is more common to say of a soldier that he is invalided home. Sick-room and sick-bed are also in common use, and sick-flag is used in place of the American quarantine-flag. An Englishman restricts the use of bug to the Cimex lectularius, or common bed-bug, and hence the word has highly impolite connotations. All other crawling things he calls insects. An American of my acquaintance once greatly offended an English friend by using bug for insect. The two were playing billiards one summer evening in the Englishman's house, and various flying things came through the window and alighted on the cloth. The American, essaying a shot, remarked that he had killed a bug with his cue. To the Englishman this seemed a slanderous reflection upon the cleanliness of his house.[1]
The Victorian era saw a great growth of absurd euphemisms in England, but it was in America that the thing was carried farthest. Bartlett hints that rooster ccame into use in place of cock as a matter of delicacy, the latter word having acquired an indecent anatomical significance, and tells us that, at one time, even bull was banned as too vulgar for refined ears. In place of it the early purists used cow-creature, male-cow and even gentleman-cow.[2] Bitch, ram, boar, stallion, buck and sow went the same way, and there was a day when even mare was prohibited. Bache tells us that pismire was also banned, antmire being substituted for it. To castrate became to alter. In 1847 the word chair was actually barred out and seat was adopted in its place.[3] These were the palmy days of euphemism. The delicate female was guarded from all knowledge, and even from all suspicion, of evil.
"To utter aloud in her presence the word shirt," says one his-
- ↑ Edgar Allen Poe's "The Gold Bug" is called "The Golden Beetle" in England. Twenty-five years ago an Englishman named Buggey, laboring under the odium attached to the name, had it changed to Norfolk-Howard, a compound made up of the title and family name of the Duke of Norfolk. The wits of London at once doubled his misery by adopting Norfolk-Howard as a euphemism for bed-bug.
- ↑ A recent example of the use of male-cow was quoted in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov. 17, 1917, advertising page 24. In "Sam Slick" (1837) a delicate maiden tells Sam that her brother is a rooster-swain in the navy.
- ↑ The New York Organ (a "family journal devoted to temperance, morality, education and general literature"), May 29, 1847. One of the editors of this delicate journal was T. S. Arthur, author of Ten Nights in a Bar-room.
