Phraseologisms as Euphemisms in Dutch and Polish

Abstract

There are quite numerous taboo words in Dutch which, because of sexual, religious or political reasons, are passed over in linguistic communication. Instead of taboo words one uses euphemisms. This research paper concerns euphemisms which are used in order to substitute taboo words; some of them are phraseologisms. At first, they are divided on the basis of Roberta Rada’s criteria into metaphorical, metonymical, and synecdochic, then the Dutch euphemisms under investigation are further subdivided into the following three types of equivalence in Polish: full, partial, and descriptive. What may seem striking is the fact that euphemistic phraseology of the equivalence type I and II is the most numerous, while the equivalence of type III occur rather seldom. The investigated corpus contains 77 euphemisms. Equivalence to Type I includes 29 examples, which represent 37.66% of the analysed corpus. Equivalence to Type II includes 37 items, which represent 48.05% of the corpus, and the equivalence to Type III—11 euphemistic expressions, which form 14.28% of the analysed corpus. The results seem to prove that the non-genetic relationship between the Nl. and Pl. is also reflected in the low correlation between euphemistic phraseology of these two languages. Another fact important in this context is that to Pl. have the same meaning and the same imagery