Euphemisms are stupid

[ikcelaks]

Tonight during the fourth quarter of the JV basketball game, I noticed that many of the students had suddenly become very upset.  I asked someone I knew who's child was a student about what had happened.  His daughter (who seemed worried but calm) told us that "there was a car wreck involving [a student]'s car, and the driver was gone".  Perhaps we

Comments

[sneaker328]

Man, that sucks.

I rarely hear the word "gone" used in that context. I mean, if someone had been really sick and dying and someone came to in to tell them "s/he's gone" ok, but its use in this case is really odd to me. Couldn't they have said, "And the driver didn't make it" or "And the driver didn't survive." It's still a bit nicer than saying "He died" or "He was killed."

[ikcelaks]

It seemed odd to me also, but I'm noticing that it's a very popular phrase today the couple times I heard other people telling people the news. I don't like the ambiguity.

[jeeperstseepers]

The usage of "gone" here is just plain weird. Very ambiguous.

And yeah, like Michelle said, I'm not used to hearing "gone" used that way. I think I hear it more on TV than in real life. People around me usually either say "passed away" or use the Hebrew term. Though to be honest, the Hebrew term does bother me a little, because it screams "I can't use the D word!" to me. "Passed away" doesn't bother me much for some reason.

[ikcelaks]

While I personally use and prefer the 'D'-word, I can understand the attraction to "passed away", especially for the more spiritually inclined. Dead is word we use for animals, plants, and half a million other things. "Passed away" seems less centered on the physical fact, and could be seen as more respectful. At any rate, it's not ambiguous.

[smrou]

The usage of "gone" here is just plain weird.
This is what I think as well. It seems to me that the problem is not so much that a euphemism was used as it is that the wrong euphemism was used. I'm quite certain I've never heard "gone" used to mean "dead" in this sort of context where the death was sudden and unexpected (only, as Michelle said, when someone was on the brink of death and everyone was basically just waiting for them to die). So I think this goes beyond euphemism--I think it's just nonstandard use of language altogether.

Out of curiosity I looked at the various e-mails that have been sent out about my former student who died last week, and the only words anyone used to describe what happened are "killed" and "died", which seems totally normal to me.