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shayneh's review against another edition
4.0
Delves well into the roots of euphemisms, along with a delightful catalog of examples.
jroxy13's review
3.0
This was an entertaining enough read, but honestly for the lack of analysis and depth involved, I would rather this have been in an encyclopedia format. There is really only a very cursory examination of each euphemism mentioned and rarely more than a few pages devoted to each topic. An encyclopedia format (even one organized similarly by topical chapter) would have been more interesting to me because it would be able to include more history. I also felt that Keyes stretched what constitutes a euphemism, particularly in the section about medical terms, when implying that use of abbreviations and acronyms is mostly for nicety's sake rather than for expediency. I probably wouldn't recommend this to any serious lovers of language (sorry, I know that sound snobby, but it's true).
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