Euphemism Buster

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Someone uses a euphemism, Last-Second Word Swap or something similar, and someone else blurts out exactly what the first person meant.

It generally comes in two versions: Ditz and Intentional. Ditz version is just the person figuring it out for himself. Intentional being the euphemism is too insulting/obvious or the character simply doesn't care, and so busts the euphemism.

The euphemism may or may not be unusual. Compare and contrast If You Know What I Mean, Don't Explain the Joke.

Examples of Euphemism Buster include:


Live Action TV

Elliot: Those gyno girls are really putting the pressure on. Who wants to look at a hundred women's bajingos today? Bajingo, bajingo, bajingo. I mean, I can't even look at my own bajingo.
Carla: Is that because it looks so much like a vagina?
Elliot: Carla, there's people!

Narrator: And in the pouch will be... let's call it 'genetic legacy'
Jamie: Genetic Legacy? It's sperm. Every kid in grade school knows that. Helps make babies, you know?

Topher: He seemed to be having a kind of...man-reaction.
Dr. Saunders: A what?
Topher: A, you know, reaction that a man -- person might have in the...you know, the...naked part. Shower. Victor.
Dr. Saunders: Victor had an erection?
Topher: I prefer man-reaction.

  • In Lost this overlaps with Censorship by Spelling. Hurley doesn't want to talk about the dead in front of a kid (Walt), so he spells it out:

Hurley: But what about the B-O-D-Y-S?
Michael: What are you trying to spell, man, "bodies"?
Walt: B-O-D-I-E-S.

Warning
Narrator: For viewers sensitive to issues of race, be advised that the following piece contains gratuitous use of the "N" word.
[[[Beat]]]
Narrator: And by the "N" word, I mean Nigger.
[[[Beat]]]
Narrator: There, I said it.

Sally: He said he wanted to sleep with me. I wanted sex, but seeing as he was tired I decided to just go home.

Mayor: No slayer of mine is going to live in a fleabag motel. That place has a very unsavory reputation. There are immoral liaisons going on there.
Faith: Yeah, plus all the screwing.

Film

Brandi: Second suitor: if we were making whoopee, what sounds would you make?
Brodie: Wait, what's whoopee?
Brandi: You know, being intimate.
Brodie: What? Like fucking?

Shenzi: Yeah, be prepared! We'll be prepared! For what?
Scar: For the death of the king!
Banzai: What, is he sick?
Scar: No, you fool, we're going to kill him.

Web Original

Joey: "Shut up, Tristan! You just wanna get into [my sister]'s pants!"
Tristan: "No I don't. I want to have sex with her!"
Beat
Tristan: "Oooooooh, that's what you meant...!"

Western Animation

Spongebob: Squidward! He's... he's... pushing up daisies!
Patrick: Oh, I thought he was dead.