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Euphemisms for death are unaliving me
The Observer
|November 09, 2025
Flabby language leads to flabby thinking - it’s time to kill it off, says Melanie Reid
When I die, please say just that: that I died.
Please do not say that I have “passed”, or “passed away”, or “passed on”, for if you do I will be very cross and come back to haunt you for such infuriating flabbiness of expression. No, actually, scrub the haunting joke. I won’t come back. I'm a hard rationalist, who doesn’t believe in ghosts or life after death. The precise problem with our journey towards woolly euphemism in the sphere of death is that sentiment is starting to beat science. And in today’s world of untruth, we have never needed the tough clarity of science more.
This story is from the November 09, 2025 edition of The Observer.
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