A Word About Dying
by
Howard Richler
“To
lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune, to
lose both looks like carelessness.” Oscar Wilde, The
Importance of Being Earnest
I
recalled this droll quip that highlights the inexact language
associated with death after listening to a CBC podcast entitled “A
Word About the Deceased” last October.
The
main thesis of the podcast was that in our modern society most people
have difficulty dealing with death. Its narrator Katherine
Ashenburg, author of The Mourner's Dance, What We Do When People
Die bemoaned the use of terms such as “lost,” “gone,”
passed” and “passed away” to replace “died.” I too
dislike such terms (and would add “departed” to her list)
because they are imprecise. Ashenburg mentioned that she offered
condolences to a woman who had told her that her husband had “gone”
only to be informed that he had merely skipped town rather than
died. The term “passed,” I believe should be restricted to gall
or kidney stones and intestinal gas. But does “passed away” even
qualify as euphemistic any more given its ubiquitous use? Ashenburg
also used the adjectives “vague,” “amorphous, ” and
“prettifying” to describe the term “passed way.” I, for
one, don't believe it is in any way unclear. Frequently euphemisms
come to embody so fully the thing being euphemized that they demand
replacement. I think “passed away” is in this category. While it
may have originally been imbued with religious significance of
“passing to heaven,” it is now used by most people devoid of this
content. Also, Ashenburg's point that a century ago people got sick
at home and died at home whereas nowadays we often delegate these
functions to professionals is undoubtedly true. However, this
doesn't translate into an increased number of euphemisms for death,
for in earlier eras there were even more circumlocutions for our
final passage.
So,
what exactly qualifies as a euphemism? The OED defines a
euphemism as a “figure of speech which consists in the substitution
of a word or expression of comparatively favourable implication or
less unpleasant associations, instead of the harsher or more
offensive one that would more precisely designate what is intended.”
Insofar as “passed away” involves a substitution, even though
one that isn't misleading, it qualifies as a euphemism. But former
OED editor Robert Burchfield once observed that “a language
without euphemism would be a defective instrument of communication.”
While in previous eras people accepted the inevitability of death
more gracefully than nowadays, every epoch has used euphemisms
associated with death, such as the term “grim reaper” widely used
in the Middle Ages. Often death has been seen as a master competitor
we try vainly to defeat in a variety of activities, e.g., “jumped
the last hurdle” (fox-hunting and steeplechase), “went to one's
last roundup” (cowboys) and “cashed in his chip.” (poker).
Some
common euphemisms for death merit more explanation. Most
etymologists believe that “kick the bucket” derives from the
process of slaughtering a pig. A pig's throat would be cut while
hanging upside down during this process. The bucket referred to a
wooden block and the rope thrown over the pulley that hoisted the
animal up. Because hoisting the block was akin to raising a bucket
from a well, the wooded block was called a “bucket.” It is open
to conjecture as to whether the dying animal would actually kick the
bucket or whether the action just refers to the animal's feet being
lashed to the wooden block. Another mysterious death euphemism,
quite prevalent in northern England, is “popping one's clogs.”
A clog is a wooden-soled shoe that was worn by poor millworkers in
19th and early 20th century England. The verb
“pop” here refers to “taking something to a pawnbroker,” as
the dead person would no longer have any need for his shoes.
And who
would have thought that the band Queen was effectively quoting
Homer's The Iliad in the song “Another One Bites the Dust”?
In 1870, American poet William Cullen Bryant translated The
Iliad into English where we find this line in Homer's epic poem,
“ His fellow warriors, many a one, fall round him to the earth and
bite the dust.”
Not
suprisingly, some of the death euphemisms of yesteryear have a strong
religious content and some are even biblical quotes. For example, “to
rest in Abraham's bosom” comes from this passage in Luke 16:22, “
And it came to pass that the beggar {Lazarus} died and was carried by
the angel into Abraham's bosom.” Also the expression “way of
all flesh” derives from a translation in the 1609 Douay Bible from
111 Kings 2:3.
Let me
conclude by hoping you a long innings before you shuffle off this
mortal coil.
Howard's
latest book is How Happy Became Homosexual and other mysterious
semantic shifts.
