Euphemisms: Hate 'em.

I can't stand euphemisms most of the time. My mother didn't "pass away," "pass on," "go to a better place," or any other euphemism for death: she died. Looking at it in the cold light of reality helps me far more than the things we say to insulate ourselves from death.

Another one I loathe is when we say people "come from diverse backgrounds" when what we mean is "they're not white." We're not really talking about their background, we're talking about their ethnicity. Sure, that's sort of a background, but we're not using it in that manner. We're not saying "This one came from the inner city slums, and this one came from Beverly Hills, and this one came from Napa," we're saying "This one's white, and this one's black, and this one's asian."

I don't, to be honest, know of a better way to say it--saying the ethnicities outright offends a lot of people for some reason. My nieces are somehow of the opinion that saying someone is asian or even that they are "Japanese" is a bad thing. Where do they get this stuff?