Euphemisms, or, usage is weird

[redbird]

A friend of mine (who can identify zirself, or not, as zie chooses) recently made a post in which zie used "shit" as a metasyntactic variable, roughly meaning "stuff like that"--and then, in the next sentence, used "poo" to refer to animal feces.

Comments

At our house...

[maryread.livejournal.com]

An entirely different sort of usage pertains. I ask about anticipated departure for informal football game: "Are you taking your ball?" Number One Son replies, "Both of em!" and prepares to leave house without any inflated rubbery object. "Only the family jewels then," I observe. He agrees to take mouth guard to protect all that lovely orthodontic work. In this way we edge delicately around Too Much Information.