Mowing the grass and mopping up

That's one I've never heard before. In my observation most people think it's from "government issue." Dictionary.com says:

• 1915–20; orig. abbr. of "galvanized iron," used in U.S. Army bookkeeping in entering articles (e.g., trash cans) made of it; later extended to all articles issued (as an assumed abbrev. of "government issue") and finally to soldiers themselves

 

Yes, but specifically on your own side. Collateral damage can occur on either side.

 

This is not a euphemism; it refers to controlling damage, whether physical or organizational. Neither, according to Dictionary.com, did it originate in wartime, although apparently it was first used by sailors (civilian and military) for repairing a ship after an accident so it would not sink. Although this source refers to its current usage as figurative, I note that projects, organizations and careers can also be "damaged."

• Measures to minimize or curtail loss or harm. For example, "As soon as they discovered the leak to the press, the senator's office worked night and day on damage control." Used literally since the 1950s, specifically for limiting the effect of an accident on a ship, this term began to be used figuratively in the 1970s.

 

I don't understand your point. That's not a euphemism. It's a paraphrase of a famous poem by Browning: "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." This is the theatrical sort of dialog one would expect in an Oscar-winning film.

While the primary definition of "harry" is to harrass or annoy, the second definition is to ravage as in war or to devastate. This too is not a euphemism.

This, too, is not a euphemism. That's a fairly straightforward description: Don't just kill the people, but render the earth itself incapable of supporting life again. The U.S. did the same thing in Vietnam, using napalm.

That's not what it means. It literally means a person of interest. It could simply be a hostile witness or a known associate of a suspect. Even his mother. They might be "detained" for a few hours for questioning. But the word "detainee" is normally reserved for a period of time long enough to ruin the person's career, finances, family life and reputation, during most of which he will not be actively questioned, but simply prevented from carrying out suspected nefarious plans or collaborating with others who are suspected of doing so.

"Intern" is a blander word than you give it credit for; it simply means "confine." If your own troops are stranded while retreating from enemy territory and have no way to get home, you can disarm them and "intern" them in a nearby neutral country until the war is over.

I knew a Japanese immigrant family who, with their American-born children, were "relocated" to Manzanar. When the war was over and they saw the photographs of Auschwitz, and then learned what had been done to so many Asian people by their own former countrymen, they said that considering the circumstances of wartime, they had gotten off rather easy: nobody was killed or even beaten, the food was as good as anybody else was getting in wartime, they were treated with reasonable dignity and had good schools, medical care, radios, newspapers, correspondence with relatives, baseball teams and Boy Scout troops, and their citizenship was never revoked.

The last thing they were going to do was complain about the nomenclature. I thought they were being a little wimpy, but they understood how much angrier Americans could easily have been at them and they were simply being philosophical about it. They implored us all to redirect our pity to the Jews, who really needed it.

How about "teat/tit" taking on a vulgar connotation and being replaced by "breast"? Both men and women have those, and only one! Or "scrotum" becoming "groin?" Again, we all have them, and in this case a pair! "Leg" became such a dirty word that chickens started sprouting "drumsticks."

There's a movement in the USA these days to ban the word "retarded." Sorry, I can't. No other word completes my alliterative label "the Religious Redneck Retard Revival."

This isn't just about politeness. Words lose their power, or sometimes accrue too much power, so we coin new ones.

When I was a kid in the 1950s, the words "asshole" and "bullshit" would stop a conversation dead, and they were absolutely never heard in mixed company. Now women use them in staff meetings. "Fart," "piss," "crap," "dick" and "pussy" are on prime-time TV.

 

Since the pronunciation of the word (YOO-fuh-miz-mm) starts with Y, which as a semivowel is counted as a consonant, we say "a euphemism."

No. It dates back to the Vietnam war and refers to a place where serious, painful injuries are inflicted, or to the injuries themselves. "Those commies sent three of our men to the hurt locker." It was eventually generalized as an equivalent for the older vernacular phrase, "in bad shape," meaning in trouble or at a disadvantage.

"Harried" is just the past participle of "to harry." If you're harried it's because someone or something has been harrying you. Since:

• Our Modern English word derives from an Anglo-Saxon word for "army,"
• Its cognates in other Germanic languages have meanings along the lines of "to lay waste to," and
• Even the primary dictionary definition of "harass or annoy" comes with the clarification "as if by repeated attacks,"

I have to assume that the original meaning of the word harry was more violent, and our modern usage is a textbook illustration of how words lose (and in other cases increase) their power over the centuries and why we have to constantly invent new ones. When people with comfortable desk jobs say, "The research for this ten-page report is killing me," it's no wonder that gang-bangers have to appropriate the word "waste" to mean literally murdering someone.

"Harrow" is a phonetic coincidence. It comes from a Stone Age word for rake or sickle, and in Modern English is a farmer's tool for leveling ground and breaking up clods. To harrow is to level farmland with such a tool to make it ready for planting and irrigation, and from that the meaning was extended to similarly disturb and break up one's mind or feelings.

"Harrass" is also a phonetic coincidence. It is Norman French, derived from the cry hare used to urge hunting dogs to the chase. Ironically it's one of the many Frankish words surviving in the Romance French language's Germanic substratum, the familiar Germanic word "here," hier, etc. So after a long, circuitous route, it has returned home to the Germanic language of Angle Land.

It would be quite difficult to scorch an area of land without killing all the people who happen to be located on it. I think the killing is implied and the scorching is simply acknowledged as a more monstrous act. Even five Paradigm Shifts past the Agricultural Revolution, an instinctive love for Mother Earth is still firmly entrenched in our unconscious.

I submit that this is the reason so many members of our species support the Green movement regardless of its economic consequences, despite our normal (and quite rational for our still-Stone Age psychology) prioritization of short-term benefits over long-term costs. It simply has to be one of the reasons every power-hungry asshole with a big red button on his desk is reluctant to actually push it, destroying the ability of that little patch of Mother Earth--and shortly thereafter his own little patch--from supporting life for many generations into the future. We may not mind "bombing each other back into the Stone Age," the era for which our instincts are, after all, tuned. But we hesitate to "harry" our Mother, or send her to the "hurt locker."

No, you misinterpreted that. "The Emperor's Clothes" is Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale about the two frustrated weavers who could not create an outfit that the king deemed worthy of him and began to worry about losing their heads. So they presented him with a suit so magical that it was invisible to anyone who is hopelessly stupid or otherwise unfit for his office. The king and all the sycophantic adults pretended to see it, until a little boy along the parade route laughed and shouted, "The Emperor is naked!"

So today that is a metaphor for "the king/ president/ premiere/ autocrat/ manager/ banker/ consultant/ parent/ teacher/ priest/ etc. is conning us."

Joe is simply having fun with it and stating that emperors, like the rest of us, are only naked when bathing. And in other situations not spoken of in polite company.

 

A eulogy, a euphonious expression, a European language, a euphoric feeling, a eustachian tube, a Euclidean proof. The first syllable in those words is identical to the first syllable in a uniform, a ukelele, a united front, a user profile, a ubiquitous problem, a YouTube video, a Yuletide carol, a Yugoslavian treaty.

The Brits generally say "an historic moment," and a few pedantic Americans copy that archaic idiosyncrasy. But I can't think of any other words beginning with H that take "an" as the indefinite article instead of "a," unless the H is silent as in "honorable." Certainly not "hotel." It's "a hotel" because the H is sounded, just like "a home" or "a wholesome meal," which start with the same phoneme.