In my final article for Suite101.com's Human Body Event, I will switch from "without words" to "with words" regarding body language by discussing some of the euphemisms relating to the human body. One reference guide consulted is Kind Words, A Thesaurus of Euphemisms by Judith S. Neaman and Carole G. Silver. The first two chapters of this book cover euphemisms for parts of the body, forbidden territory and neutral territory. The essays contained in this book are entertaining as well as informative.
The authors state that religious euphemisms were among the first. But, given society's love-hate relationship with our bodies, I would imagine euphemisms for body parts followed shortly.
The authors write: "When Nathaniel Hawthorne died in 1864, his wife, Sophia Peabody, carefully edited his journals, removing all references to the leg and substituting the word 'limb.' And this was no wonder in an age when even piano limbs were discreetly covered and chairs wore skirts. By the 1920s, the female leg was, for the first time since ancient Greece, on public view."
In the 19th century, the English and then Americans used the term "white meat" to request the breast meat of poultry without using the word, "breast." Dark meat was used instead of thigh.
In 1959, life jackets were called Mae Wests, referring to the well-endowed wise-cracking blonde movie star. The posterior has many euphemisms: afters, after part, backside, seat, soft peat, backseat, rumble seat, rear, rear end, rear guard, behind, brunswick, caboose, derriere, latter end, hootenanny, keel, labonza, parking place, rusty-dusty, southern exposure, heinie and fanny. In the 1950s, a popular saying in America was "you're a pain in the francis." Bottom was used in 1794 by Erasmus Darwin, a British writer, in Zoonomia.
According to the authors, midriff originated in the Anglo-Saxon word for the middle of the belly - mid hrif- and referred to the diaphragm. "A Saxon leechbook of 1000 defines the midrif as the 'area lying between the womb and the liver.' The term survived in its technical anatomical meaning for centuries. In 1596, Shakespeare has a character insult Falstaff by saying, 'There's no room for faith, truth or honesty in this bosom of thine; it is filled up with guts and midriff' (I Henry IV, III, iii, 175)"
Tummy for stomach. Where did that begin? The authors state that the expression has been in the popular lexicon since 1868 when W.S. Gilbert in Bab Ballads asked: "Why should I hesitate to own/That pain was in his little tummy?"
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