Very Nice Ways to Say Very Bad Things: An Unusual Book of Euphemisms

This book is a glorious demonstration of all the terrible things that we can say about one other, spoken in the glancing hilarity of euphemism, and presented in a delightful concoction of erudition and etymology. Civilized people across the ages have gone to such lengths to avoid saying the worst, or to say the worst in more polite terms, and this book brings to bear more scholarship, thought, and whimsy to these words and phrases than was expected or thought possible, leading this reviewer to blush, giggle, and laugh out loud in the middle of a bookstore. Well-written, well-researched, and well-illustrated, it it marvel that the English language can express so beautifully the worst things in our nature to express. Sex, old age, excrement, pregnancy, and drunkenness are just a few of the topics treated euphemistically.