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Euphemisms make the unpalatable more palatable. People use euphemisms chiefly to conceal feared things, for example death; to conceal the reality of unthinkable crimes; to conceal references to sex, body parts and fluids, and excrement; and to elevate otherwise lowly sounding or derogatory occupational titles and institutional names. For instance, there are hundreds of euphemisms used every day for to die, a few of which are pass on/away, go to one's final rest, and depart/depart this life. Two of the most notorious euphemisms for genocide are, of course, the Final Solution and ethnic cleansing. Euphemistic references to sex and physiology are legion: break wind for fart and social disease for sexually transmitted disease are typical. Euphemisms that elevate the language of occupational titles include, for example, sanitation engineer for dustman, and those that elevate rather harsh-sounding institutional names include place of confinement for prison. The capacity of a euphemism to conceal tends to diminish over the years, as it becomes more and more closely associated with its referent, and if the taboo against talking about the referent remains in force, a fresh euphemism needs to be found for it. For instance, sexual intercourse was once a euphemism (for copulation), but it has long since become a plainly understood neutral term, and have sexual intercourse with somebody now needs its own euphemism, to sleep with somebody. Euphemisms tend to turn into dysphemisms, their opposite, because the inescapable fact is that if something is feared or despised, the vocabulary used to refer to it will become tainted by those feelings, even if originally it was intended to disguise them.
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