A product-verb euphemism is a harm described in the vocabulary of the tool that does it: a short, upbeat verb coined to sell a service, then lifted into the headline as if it were a description. The word sounds like a feature, in the family of “beautify”, “personalise” or “enhance”, and it carries none of what the act is: who is harmed, without consent, under which law. The plain name is usually right there in the court record or the prosecutor’s statement. It just doesn’t make the headline.
It differs from euphemism laundering, where the soft word comes from an institution (a ministry, a police force, a company press office) and is repeated until it sounds neutral. Here the source is the market: the people selling, or using, the tool. Repeating their verb gives the act the register of a product category, and a product category invites curiosity about the product rather than attention to the victim.
- “Nudify” over the charge sheet. Four outlets covered a supply teacher jailed for upskirting pupils and turning their social media photos into sexual deepfakes. Three put “nudify” in the headline or lede. The prosecutors’ own phrase, “sexualised deepfake images of pupils”, is quoted in the bodies, and the offence has a legal name, “making indecent photographs/pseudo photographs of a child”. Neither reached the headline. Two outlets wrapped “nudify” in scare quotes, which flags the word as borrowed but still lets it set the frame.
The test is simple: replace the verb with the name of the offence, and see whether the headline still reads as gently.
