When euphemisms get tasty: How people have used words to combat food taboos
chicken for himself but told the waiter to bill it as a vegetarian dish. This was treated as quite routine.
I was reminded of this while reading Avay Shukla’s memoir of IAS life, 'The Deputy Commissioner’s Dog and Other Colleagues'. Since liquor is not allowed at government dinners, it is simply billed as chicken, he wrote: “A peg of single malt is worth a whole chicken, a Scotch two legs, a shot of rum is equivalent to a wing…”
This kind of creativity comes up whenever people find consumption habits constrained. Yes Minister, the British TV serial, depicted this with an episode set in a Middle Eastern country with strict prohibitions on alcohol. So, at an official reception, the British set up a secure communications room where the booze is stored and periodically, the minister and bureaucrats visit it for a ‘message’ from “Mr Johnny Walker from the Scotch Office”, “Mr Smirnoff from the Russian embassy” or “a delegation of Teachers”.
Sarah Tillotson’s Indian Mansions, a history of the haveli, shows how meat and egg urges were squared with the strict vegetarian ethos of many establishments: “Though men might pollute their stomachs and cooking pans, purity was maintained at least for family account books: When the munim (accountant) gave the servants money to buy food, he carefully recorded eggs and chickens as ‘white potatoes’ and ‘moving vegetables’.”
In Israel, pork consumption isn’t banned, but definitely frowned upon, so one solution has been to call it ‘king rabbit’. Hamari Jamatia records a similar
