Euphemisms and Shortenings
I watch with interest the way the speakers of our living English (American) language play fast and loose with terminology and grammar, making it more comfy. For example, back when I was working there was project involving those supplemental seats that young moms use to secure infants in automobiles. One of the clerks had brought up the subject using the common everyday term ‘car seat.’ My boss wanted to be sure that we used the right term in what we were doing, and asked me to look into the matter. I uncovered a number of alternate names such as might befit engineering work, military inventory lists, or company product catalogs. In the end, we used ‘car seat’.
Another favorite for me is ‘affair’ for marital cheating, along with ‘making love’ for what they do. Before I picked up on the comfy lingo, an ‘affair’ was some kind of complicated business or diplomatic undertaking, and ‘making love’ was ‘necking’, more or less’.
In the sports and jazz worlds there is the quaint practice of trimming down actual names to just a salient syllable or two, like ‘O’s’ for Orioles or ‘Hamp’ for Lionel Hampton.
Even at church we do it. For instance, ‘J-P II’ and ‘the bread’ and ‘the wine’.
