Today’s word of the day, courtesy of Words Coach (https://www.wordscoach.com/dictionary), is euphemism. Euphemism is a noun that means “the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt” or “the expression so substituted” (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/euphemism). It’s pronounced /ˈyu fəˌmɪz əm/, with the primary stress on the first syllable and a secondary stress on the third syllable (ibid.).

Merriam-Webster explains: “Euphemisms can take different forms, but they all involve substituting a word or phrase considered to be less offensive than another. The substituted word might, for example, be viewed as a less coarse choice, as when dang or darn is used instead of damn or damned. Or it might replace a word viewed as insulting to a religious figure, such as the various euphemisms for God (gad, gadzooks, gosh) or Jesus (gee, jeepers, jeez). A euphemism may also consist of an indirect softening phrase that is substituted for the straightforward naming of something unpalatable. Thus, we hear of people being ‘let go’ rather than ‘fired’; civilians killed in war described as ‘collateral damage’; or someone who has died having ‘kicked the bucket,’ ‘passed away,’ ‘given up the ghost,’ or ‘joined one’s ancestors’” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/euphemism).

According to Etymonline.com, the word appears in English in the “1650s, from Greek euphemismos “use of a favorable word in place of an inauspicious one, superstitious avoidance of words of ill-omen during religious ceremonies,” also of substitutions such as Eumenides for the Furies. This is from euphemizein ‘speak with fair words, use words of good omen,’ from eu- ‘good, well’ (see eu-) + phēmē ‘speech, voice, utterance, a speaking,’ from phanai ‘speak’ (from PIE root *bha- (2) ‘to speak, tell, say’)” (https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=euphemismhttps://www.etymonline.com/search?q=euphemism). The website then provides a quote from the 4^th century grammarian Helladius of Antinopolis, as quote by Photius, a 9^th century patriarch: “All the ancients, but most of all the Athenians, were careful not to use ill-omened words; so they called the prison ‘the chamber,’ and the executioner ‘the public man,’ and the Furies (Erinyes) they called ‘Eumenides’ (‘the kindly ones’) or ‘the Venerable Goddesses'” (ibid.).

On this date in 1665, Samuel Pepys (pronounced /pips/, like peeps) wrote the following in his diary: “This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ writ there; which was a sad sight to me, being the first of the kind that, to my remembrance, I ever saw. It put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell to and chaw, which took away the apprehension” (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1665/06/07/). What did the red cross mean? “Daniel Defoe reported, at the time of the Great Plague in 1665, that the Lord Mayor of London, in his regulations, stated:

“’That every house visited [by the disease] be marked with a red cross of a foot long in the middle of the door, evident to be seen, and with these usual printed words, that is to say, “Lord, have mercy upon us,” to be set close over the same cross, there to continue until lawful opening of the same house’” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_cross). Of course, Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year wasn’t published until 1722, but I think we can take his word for what it meant.

Samuel Pepys is recognized as the first diarist in the history of English literature, although he did not write it for publication. In fact, as the years of his diary writing progressed, he came to use more and more misdirection in his language so that if anyone were to see.  what he had written they would be hard pressed to understand it. Initially, he used a short-hand writing system invented by Thomas Shelton (c. 1600/01-c. 1650), published in his book Tachygraphie. But as the diary went along, he incorporated words from languages other than English and added special symbols to the words to make them even less decipherable. “In 1668, for example, Pepys worried that he had angered the actress Elizabeth Knepp by ‘ponendo her mano upolon mini cosa’. A would-be reader would need to know the shorthand, identify and translate the Latin and Spanish, and remove the extraneous symbols to reveal that Pepys had been ‘putting her hand upon my thing’” (https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/hidden-diary-samuel-pepys).

Samuel Pepys was not what you’d expect from an English bureaucrat of the 17^th century. He cheated on his wife frequently, and he seemed to take a bit of pride in his deceit. But there are parts of his diary that have real historical interest—his account of the Great Fire of 1666, his description of the coronation of Charles II, and his writing about the plague.

But even when he is writing about his sexual exploits, the writing is interesting for linguistic and even cryptographic reasons. And then, even when the writing is deciphered, there is his use of euphemism.

Today’s image is of Samuel and Elizabeth Pepys. The one of Elizabeth is an “engraving by James Thomson, 1828, after the 1666 painting by John Hayls” (https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/hidden-diary-samuel-pepys). The one of Samuel Pepys is a “Portrait of Samuel Pepys by John Riley, late 17th century. Yale University Art Gallery. Public Domain” (ibid.). Does it look like a marriage made in heaven?