EUPHEMISM, n. [1.] A figure of speech in which the speaker or writer makes his expression a good deal softer than the facts would warrant him in doing; as, for example, in the famous triolet of the Rev. Adiposus Drowze, rector of the Church of St. Sinecure, this Diocese:
Iscariot blundered in selling for thirty,
And all the Jews wondered that Judas had blundered.
By asking a hundred his crime were less dirty.
Iscariot blundered in selling for thirty.
[2.] In rhetoric, a figure by which the severe asperity of truth is mitigated by the use of a softer expression than the facts would warrant — as, to call Mr. Charles Crocker ninety-nine kinds of a knave.