Verbal malversations

"If I find a way of expressing adequately now what I am thinking and feeling you will take it to be a piece of verbal dexterity and the latest in a long line of verbal malversations. You see! I can't even say 'deceit'. I have to say 'verbal malversations'." (Stephen Fry, The Liar)


We just like euphemisms (eu good + pheme speaking = cheating). False teeth are dentures, constipation is occasional irregularity, toilet paper is bathroom tissue, panty hose have control tops, not girdles, and somebody didn’t die but passed away. Evidently, everything unpleasant needs to be renamed to make it at least sound less unpleasant. Does this make somebody’s death or the rotting of our teeth less disturbing? Certainly not. Euphemisms are just a way to sugarcoat the truth, to cheat ourselves.
But what about the new euphemisms for plagiarism, which - being the theft of somebody else’s intellectual property - already means cheating? Free-appropriation, adaptation, remix, communal creativity, repurposing, re-contextualizing, open-source approach - whatever one wants to call it - is then cheating to the power of 2.

To "repurpose" a sentence by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in politics, what begins with euphemisms usually ends in folly.

[David Brooks] had published an unusually harsh column criticizing what he saw as Democratic overreach on health care and the stimulus. Already, he had heard from administration officials complaining about the piece. But “they’re always nice,” Brooks said, adding, “It’s never, ‘You’re a complete asshole.’My line is, the Clinton people would tell you you’re a complete and total asshole. The Obama people say, ‘We love you. You’re a great guy. It’s sad you’re a complete and total asshole.’ They’re always very mature about it.” (Gabriel Sherman, "The Courtship")