I love euphemisms.
Maybe it’s a tragic sign of how English language speakers can’t talk openly and honestly about so many things. It’s quite possibly true, but that’s OK because they are often hilarious. Typical difficult subjects for us are anything to do with death, sex, excretion, or just about any other bodily function. We’re not just talking synonyms here – this is about saying things in a way that doesn’t make your maiden aunt uncomfortable. (This is the “maiden aunt” of fiction, whose natural habitat is suburban or rural 1950s England and/or Agatha Christie novels.) Typically these phrases tend to be mealy mouthed and dull, but my favourites are obscure joys.
Toilet breaks are a rich source of euphemisms. On the one hand, I don’t think anyone outside their immediate friends and family can get away with “I need a crap”, although interestingly “I need to pee/(have) a wee” is probably fine. I consider “I need the bathroom “ a weaselly Americanism for “I need to go to the toilet/loo (or even lavvy, for lavatory)”
More interesting and therefore acceptable to me is “I need to powder my nose”, which unfortunately you hardly ever hear these days. Bizarrely, if you did want to actually powder your nose, it had its own euphemism “I need to freshen up”. Nowt as queer as folk, am I right? The best of all on this topic, and possibly my favourite on any subject, is “I have to see a man about a dog”, which must have left generations of non English speakers completely befuddled.
Euphemisms for death are another rich subject. I consider “passed” another milquetoast term in the same bracket as “bathroom”. Much better are any of the ones used in the Monty Python parrot sketch:
Or even more obscure and delightful “he’s stuck his spoon into the wall”.