Watch what they refuse to call by its real name
Euphemism is anxiety wearing a tie. The words people dress up tell you exactly where they feel small.
Listen to the words a person chooses for the things that frighten them, and they will hand you a map of their fears without meaning to. People do not dress up the words they are comfortable with. They dress up the ones that touch a place where they feel small. The decoration is the tell.
A man who is at ease with money says money. A man who is anxious about it says liquidity, or exposure, or his position. The longer the word, the closer you are standing to the wound.
I learned to listen for this the way a doctor listens for a particular sound. Not the loud declarations, which are rehearsed, but the small linguistic flinch around the subject a person cannot say plainly.
The reach is the wound
Someone who has fired a person and made peace with it says, I let him go, and means it simply. Someone who has not made peace with it reaches for a phrase: we right-sized, we made some difficult decisions, we parted ways. The reach for the softer word is the sound of a conscience that has not settled. Plain speech is the privilege of the untroubled.
You will hear it around death, around debt, around failure, around every place where a person has not yet forgiven themselves or their circumstances. The vocabulary inflates in exact proportion to the discomfort underneath it. Find the inflated word and you have found the soft place, and you did not have to ask a single question to find it.
Including your own
The use of this is not to catch other people out. It is to catch yourself. Notice the subjects on which your own language reaches for the dressed-up word, because each one marks a place you have not yet made peace with. The thing you cannot name plainly is usually the thing you most need to look at directly.
Say the plain word. It is uncomfortable for a moment, and then it is free, and the room can feel the difference even when it cannot say why. The person who can name the hard thing simply is read, correctly, as someone who is not afraid of it.
Find the dressed-up word and you have found the fear. Begin with your own.
What does the language someone uses reveal?
Their fears. People dress up the words that touch a place they feel small. The longer the word, the closer you are standing to the wound.
Why is plain speech a sign of confidence?
Calling things by their real names is the privilege of the untroubled. The reach for a softer word is the sound of a conscience that has not yet settled.
How do you use this on yourself?
Notice the subjects where your own language reaches for the dressed-up word. Each one marks something you have not yet made peace with, and usually most need to look at directly.
I curate the rules. I did not build the workshop. If your own words keep reaching for cover, the man who built me helps living people say the plain thing plainly.
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