14 DAY TRIAL // Here is a list of the 12 most misleading sets of words that we could find in use, most of them in the United States, which seems to have a real appetite for calling things by names they have nothing to do with. These are just a few examples.
Binocular Deprivation means no more no less than to sew an animal's eyes shut during an experiment, for various purposes. The technique is widely used in research labs worldwide, and is meticulously described in each paper featuring the procedure.
Biosolids is just another word for sewage sludge, and is employed in official documents instead of other terms. This word, like many others from the list, is only meant to make a bad thing sound good, and has nothing to do with being politically correct. It's all about PR and image.
Extraordinary Rendition simply refers to kidnapping. The term was coined by US officials, when they were trying to come up with an official word for taking people from conflict zones without their consent, and then flying them to US bases around the world, for questioning and torture. The military, in general, is the most productive “generator” of seemingly-harmless euphemisms. End-of-life Decision-making is a long phrase that, in popular language, can be translated into “contemplating suicide.” This is the process people who plan to kill themselves go through before the actual deed. It refers to the place, the time, and the method they will use to put an end to their own lives.
Depopulate is an abstract term that sadly refers to killing an entire population of animals on a designated territory. Most often, the word is employed in conjuncture with a farm or a forest. Land owners sometimes do this to admittedly control diseases or other such situations.
Debarking means the extraction of the vocal cords in animals, especially including cats and dogs, for the purpose of comforting the people who have taken them in without being in the “mood” to actually take care of a living thing.
Compassion Zone refers to an area in Kansas City designated some years ago, in which all the homeless people were gathered for the purpose of easy control. Naturally, the rest of the city was off-limits, and beggars, alongside other poor people with no roofs over their heads, had to be confined as if in a prison.
Normal Involuntary Attrition refers to nothing more than getting fired. This category of words that managers use to let people know they are no longer working for a company, includes other such ambiguous terms as “dehiring,” “negative employee retention,” “assign candidates to a mobility pool,” “surplussed,” and others of the sort.
Budget Reinforcement is one of the latest governmental words that it has made up for “taxes.” Basically, whenever it says that the budget needs to be reinforced, it avoids stating that it actually needs people's money to do that. This way, citizens feel they are working for the higher good.
Public Diplomacy is one of the most deceiving terms in America today. Simply put, it refers to propaganda. Regardless of whether it's white, black or gray, propaganda can only have one purpose, namely to serve false information to the general public. And it's used extensively in the United States.
Non-operative Personnel is another invention of the military, and it simply talks about dead people. And we have to admit, it takes a lot of courage to refer to men and women who died for their country in terms of the things they do not do at the moment, instead of the things they did while they were alive. Surprisingly enough, none of the relatives of those killed in Iraq or Afghanistan have protested against this euphemism.
Transfer Tubes have nothing to do with the tubes used for sending letters from one place to another. It simply refers to body bags, as in those used by coroners to move a victim from a crime scene to the morgue. The fact that the term sounds so general has made it widely accepted, although no one knows exactly what it means.
These are only a few of the euphemisms used by governments to deceive people, as they were discovered by Cracked. Undoubtedly, each of you comes across similar phrases every day, and we ask you to post a comment if you find some that are not listed here, but are as serious in meaning as these ones.