Euphemism is a figure of speech in which a speaker tries to
express a meaning felt to be unpleasant as something felt to be
more acceptable, because less direct, or less blunt. People in
the English-speaking world often avoid saying that someone dear
to them has died. Instead, they say "I lost my mother", or "My
father passed away last week." The adjective is euphemistic. The
three main areas in which euphemism is common in the UK are
death, sex and going to the toilet. (Toilet itself is a
euphemism. It originally meant 'a small cloth used to cover
clothes and protect them' [from the French word toile, cloth, +
a diminutive suffix]. From its use as 'a cloth over the
shoulders during hair-dressing, etc', it seems to have become
attached to the articles with which one can make one's toilet (~
get dressed, or made-up - prepared to meet the day), and so 'a
place where one could wash'. In due course, this became 'the
room in which could perform those private functions after which
one might wash one's hands', or go