https://wordsmith.org/words/today.html. Note: this only works as today's word, well, today!
MEANING:
noun: The substitution of a harsher, deprecating, or offensive term in place of a relatively neutral term.
Republicans are masters at this "skill". The first example that sprang to mind was the replacement (in reference to a tax) of Death for Estate in order to gin up unfounded hysteria in the minds of the 99.8% of those who will never pay this tax. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=what+percent+of+taxpayers+are+at+risk+of+owing+estate+taxes%3F
My goodness, that substitution actually works on the hue level too: the red font is so much more threatening than the blue font even though they are on the same font color chart intensity level in this app. (Or is Blogger part of the deep state cabal?)
Other footprints that come to mind are illegal and alien for UNDOCUMENTED. My god! it even works when the neutral word is in all caps, versus lower case demonizing terms.
And in some cases, an identical term wielded by a Pacydermically aligned speaker such as "poor"
carries the weight of approbation that doesn't weigh down the message following "poor"
when being referenced the donkey defenders. I looked for a clear example of what I mean on line, but was stumped by this fact: it is not usually the actual words following a Republican description for how to "help" the poor, so much as the actual proposed solutions. Here is one:
Principles for Poverty Alleviation
Four principles summarize the approach:
• Solve the right problem. The problem is not poverty.
The problem is that too many Americans are not
self-sufficient.
(from "Reducing Poverty the Republican Way" via the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality)
So, these benighted folks are not actually poor (which some might pity), just not self sufficient which I guess means that they could escape poverty if only they could do so without help. yeeeeesss....... Oh! Right! Highly achieving drug purveyors have shown the self-sufficiency to escape poverty without asking for a handout. We need more of that of outside-the-ghetto thinking among the poverty stricken.
There, I think this screed exemplifies perfectly the state of my political protestations to the pickle Republicans manage to ensure is on the value menu for America.