Euphemisms in English Everyday Discourse Eufemismy V anglickém jazykovém prostředí

suffering from discomfort
says documentary broadcast by state media 
amid speculation over 31-year-old’s health.”
(McCurry, 2014)

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47 
“On Friday, North Korean authorities, in a rare display of openness about their 
leader’s health, admitted for the first time that Kim was 
suffering from an 
uncomfortable physical condition
, although they did not confirm rumours that 
the 31-year-old Swiss-educated leader was suffering from gout.” 
(McCurry, 
2014) 
Some euphemisms are metaphorical in their nature. They are based on the 
fact that they are not so transparent. It means that without knowing the expression 
itself people are not able to guess what it stands for. The example below shows 
that the words are not related to the health at all. It provides a great camouflage of 
what is going on. The term refers to short-term health issues, but one would not 
use it when speaking about long lasting or terminal illness.
“Mistakes happen; children 
feel under the weather
or have a bad evening 
beforehand. This does not mean that teachers are not working as hard as 
possible.”
(BBC, 2015)
As it was mentioned in the theoretical part, people feel uneasy when they 
speak about diseases. They are afraid of it from various reasons such as hurting 
someone’s feeling. Also, fear plays an important role. Thus, people choose their 
words carefully and use euphemism in order to soften such an unpleasant aspect 
of life. A disease, people currently fear the most, is cancer. The euphemisms in 
the examples below are based on the uniqueness of the illness and on its features 
such as inability to cure it at some states and its terminal character. Although the 
disease is not named directly we precisely know for which illness these 
euphemisms stand. Both euphemistic alternatives are formal and frequently used 
in press.

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48 
“But growing numbers of people are still being diagnosed with 
the illness
. 
Traditional chemotherapy kills healthy cells as well as cancer cells – and there is 
always the possibility the disease will come back.” 
(Boseley, 2016)
“I was intrigued about how they would turn a show about a young mum with an