ON THE QUESTION OF EUPHEMISMS AMONG INTERJECTIONS

Abstract

The research studies development of ways of mitigating the meaning of taboo words in speech by means of euphemisms. The language material is presented by a class of Russian words that symbolically are called as the ones that start with the letter Ё and a class of English euphemistic corruptions of religious vocatives Jesus, Christ, God and Lord. The collected interjections from English reveal a numerous group of exclamations of surprise, based on the vocatives Jesus and God, which have become very popular at least since 19 century up to the present time. The author highlights the way the interjection d’oh is formed and pronounced in modern English. The work shows that the Russian Ё-exclamations all tend to have the first phoneme resembling the first phoneme of their producing word. The cases of the English euphemisms show that they tend to keep either the first or the last phoneme of their producing words (god > gosh, lord > losh; god’s > Odd’s > ’s /z/).