Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Disease, death and killing 225
evoke the misfortunate lack caused by an event over which the bereaved has
no control. The deceased, having been lost, is then missed by those left alive
to mourn their loss, as in the death notice that reads:
Nature’s gentleman, sadly missed.
The loss motif is also found in statements about the loved one being taken
(either by a god or by malevolent fate):
On this day you were taken away . . .
Our darling brother, taken so tragically in New Zealand . . .
In Egypt’s Valley of the Kings, a relief showing the birth of King Amenophis
III depicts two neonates: one is the king’s corporeal form, the other is his
soul. Belief in this dual character of living things is almost universal. Activity
in animals and humans is explained by the presence of a soul in the body;
sleep and death indicate its absence – which is why sleep is a frequent
euphemism for death. In sleep, the soul’s absence is only temporary but on
death, the soul vacates the body forever; and a soul without a body to reside in
must be laid to rest somehow, lest it become distressed and trouble the living.
The ancient notion of a displaced soul is invoked in such death notices as the
following, which reflects orthodox Roman Catholic belief:
Prayers for the repose of the soul of Mr Philip Rowe Parker will be offered in our
Chapel.
Our word cemetery derives from Ancient Greek koimotérion ‘dormitory’.
The dead are often likened to the sleeping: ‘The sleeping and the dead / Are
but as pictures.’ 50 There is an obvious similarity between a sleeping body and
a dead one, and sleep has often been regarded as a temporary death, a period
when the soul leaves the body to return when it awakens:
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.
To describe death as sleep is to pretend that it, too, is temporary; so death
notices often substitute sleep for death.
Wayne . . . Sleeping peacefully, free from pain.
In loving memory of my darling husband Percival William who fell asleep on May 21,
19—.
The stem of the word obituary is Latin obiter ‘on the journey’. Many
peoples have regarded death as the start of the soul’s journey into the afterlife,