Euphemistic Terms

Angelika I am always fascinated by the ingenuity of Americans when it comes to expressing things concisely or vividly and clearly depicting situations that can only be described in a roundabout way in German. In this context, one might recall the Iraq War, during which many euphemisms were used. For example, the military strategy of the bombing campaign on Baghdad was described as "shock and awe," and the countries that uncritically aligned themselves with Bush were referred to as the "coalition of the willing."

Americans truly excel when it comes to inventing acronyms that make sense on their own, making them easier to remember and visualize. A particularly popular area of application is laws or other bureaucratic documents. At the end of this year, a new system called USVISIT (US Visitor and Immigration Status Indication Technology System) will be tested at airports and ports. This involves border authorities collecting biometric data from tourists, businesspeople, and students upon their entry into the USA and later recording the time of their departure.

The abbreviation TIPS (Terrorism Information and Prevention System) for the heavily criticized and therefore ultimately shelved Stasi-like surveillance system (where the mail carrier, the gas meter reader, and the neighbor were supposed to snoop around on behalf of the government) for combating terrorism in America is not to be underestimated.

And since I'm currently talking about linguistic curiosities, I must not forget to highlight the American fascination with spelling words. This may initially be due to the fact that there is a subject called "Spelling" in school. But the spelling competitions held at local and national levels certainly also contribute to its popularity.

"Spelling Bees" are what these competitions are called here, where students of all ages compete against each other and have to spell the craziest words. A judge provides a word, and the student then spells it out from memory. Writing down the word is, of course, forbidden. The poor children are bombarded with words that even adult English speakers do not know. Last year, someone won the national competition by correctly breaking down the word "prospicience," which I couldn't even find in my best dictionary, into individual letters. In 2001, it was "succedaneum," whatever that may mean.

Funnily enough, spelling is sometimes used as a secret language between parents, caregivers, and teachers when young children are present who cannot yet read, and are not supposed to understand what is being discussed: S-E-X is always spelled out in prudish America, as is B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T (big nonsense/rubbish). Some people, however, spell so quickly that even I, who never went through rigorous spelling training, sometimes get confused!