[bullfightonmars]

George Carlin has a great bit on euphemism where he makes the case that euphemisms are used to soften the meaning of things that are painful to the point of being meaningless, e.g. shellshock -> ptsd

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc

The author of this article pointed our some similar examples: welfare -> cash assistance -> TANF.

[Dylan16807]

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a much more accurate term. You can get it with no shells, after all. And "trauma" is not a very soft word.

Is the problem just shortening it because it takes too long to say?

[YurgenJurgensen]

Initialisms in common speech are the linguistic equivalent of a code smell; people are right to react negatively towards them (and the appropriate degree of negative reaction increases with the length of the initialism in question).

[lazyasciiart]

No they aren't. RSVP, DIY, PhD, ASAP, BYO, TMI... there's no reason to dislike them any more than there's a reason to dislike adjectives.

[Grustaf]

It's a very American thing to pepper your speech with euphemistic initialisms, a lot of people outside the US find it cheesy and annoying.

[drewcoo]

RSVP is from French.

I wish I could cleverly work in a "QED" here (from Latin) but it just doesn't fit.

[Grustaf]

I was talking about spoken language, not the existence of initialisms per se. Though I'd wager they are a lot more prevalent in written American English than in most other languages as well. Nobody else would think of inventing an initialism-euphemism for body odour (which I guess already is a euphemism for "smell" for example. Or "significant other".

By the way, QED is just a calque from Greek. (Like most things Roman...)

[lazyasciiart]

Funny, when I was born and grew up outside the US it was very common there too. Perhaps you'd like to scope your claim down to a specific group of people who find it annoying?

[zeroonetwothree]

They are quite prevalent in Russian as well (though I am not sure if American English is actually “peppered” as you claim).

[vlunkr]

Stupid Americans and their checks notes acronyms.

[Grustaf]

Can you find a non-American that doesn't find it cringe to use "BM" for "poo"?

[AtlasBarfed]

PTSD is an acronym, so it hides the meaning, restricts the awareness. The name itself kind of sucks too.

Horrors of War Syndrome would probably be better.

[hungie]

But... you can get PTSD from lots of non war scenarios. Rape, abuse, injury and accidents, loss of loved ones, etc.

[labster]

Again, that might work fine for veterans, but not for victims of peacetime rape and horrific accidents who have similar symptoms. The syndrome needs a common name, like: he has “the horrors”.

[shadowgovt]

But how do you end up with Horrors of War Syndrome after being in a car crash?

[QuadmasterXLII]

I thought there was recent evidence that shellshock actually was pretty distinct from modern ptsd, where ptsd is psychological and shell shock was just nearby artillery mechanically disconnecting your brain cells

[jfoutz]

FWIW, I dated a psychologist for a while, and we talked about this specific monologue.

She primarily worked with sexual abuse victims, but spent a lot of time veterans as well. Her focus was PTSD, and talk therapy is really effective for PTSD.

Her opinion was, in world war 1, They didn't really have the psychologic or physical frameworks to really distinguish. Certainly, some people had mechanical damage, like football players. Certainly, some people really had a hard time experiencing the horrors of war. They just didn't really know.

Calling it shell shock, that helped some of the veterans. Helped them sorta get that they're not alone. People have dealt with this for a long time.

Rape victims, shell shock isn't a great name. For a lot of reasons.

It's kinda about recognizing that this trauma is a real thing, there's nothing wrong with you. This is a normal reaction, everyone goes through it. Some people need a little help finding their way back to normal.

[guerrilla]

In other words, she hadn't seen the new evidence that they are distinct since it wasn't available at the time.

[jfoutz]

Ya know, this was a some time ago, and memorable for the relation to Carlin's bit. Let's place any errors in terminology on my foggy memory.

[philwelch]

In retrospect it’s likely that a lot of the people diagnosed with “shell shock” would today have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury rather than (or possibly in addition to) PTSD.

[Cthulhu_]

It's important to note that WW1 was very different from preceding wars; people spent weeks, months in the trenches, always on edge for incoming artillery or chemical attacks. The only thing that comes close is sieges from back when, which were its own kind of shit.

[vlunkr]

That is exactly the definition of a euphemism. It’s a synonym that is less harsh or blunt.

I doesn’t have to be a negative thing either. PTSD is more inclusive, since it doesn’t imply that you’ve literally had bombs dropped on you relentlessly, like shellshock does.

[jojobas]

Any mental disorder will still be seen as bad (duh), bombs or not, euphemized or not. It's an exercise in futility.

[burnished]

No, its not. I have lived through this most recent shift and I can tell you going from ignoring mental health in the hopes that it will 'make you be normal' to talking about how we experience the world and offering each other reasonable accommodations has been pretty nice.

[Cthulhu_]

And that's not right, because labeling them as "bad" and calling them "disorders" stigmatizes those who suffer from it.

[yuliyp]

Some traits are mostly-negative traits. That's just the nature of life. I'm fat/obese/overweight/slow/thick/plus-sized/curvy. It's a negative trait I have. Someone referring to me in that way can be fine, or it can be stigmatizing. The word used doesn't really affect whether it's stigmatizing. If it's being used to insult/put me down, it's stigmatizing. If it's used descriptively it's not.

If I say to someone to "make way for the blind person walking there" I'm not attacking them, but trying to help them navigate a crowded area safely. That's true regardless of whether I referred to them as blind, unsighted, vision-impaired, differently-abled, or anything else. Similarly, If I were mocking them I'd be stigmatizing them regardless of the word I used for it.

[snapplebobapple]

I prefer doug stanhopes contribution on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv3-d98v9zc