Beware the Deceptive Euphemisms that Hide Insidious Evils
Benjamin Franklin defined a diplomat as someone who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip. While I would never recommend Mr. Franklin’s suggested destination to anyone, diplomatically or otherwise, I get his point. With carefully chosen words and phrases, resistant minds can be opened to receive hard-to-sell concepts. Nathaniel Hawthorne agreed, saying, “How potent for good and evil [words] become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”
Masking Evil
The adversaries of truth, who abound in our culture today, have mastered this subtle art of combining easy-to-swallow words to sweeten poisonous ideologies. They have become expert at releasing...
Artist and writer Thomas Williams was formerly the art director for Word Publishing. He is the author of The Heart of the Chronicles of Narnia (Thomas Nelson) and fourteen other books of light theology and fiction. He is co-author with Josh McDowell of How to Know God Exists.
Get Salvo in your inbox! This article originally appeared in Salvo, Issue #74, Fall 2025 Copyright © 2025 Salvo | www.salvomag.com https://salvomag.com/article/salvo74/verbal-guile
