Describes language that says a hard or embarrassing thing in a soft, indirect way, so that nobody is shocked or upset. If someone dies and you say they 'passed away', that is euphemistic. If a company fires 300 people and calls it 'downsizing' or 'letting people go', that is euphemistic too. The word covers the whole range: gentle kindness at a funeral, polite avoidance of anything to do with the toilet or the body or sex, and — very often — the dressing-up of bad news by governments, companies and armies. It is an adjective, and it sits in front of nouns like 'term', 'expression', 'phrase', 'language', or after 'be': 'a euphemistic term for prison', 'the report was very euphemistic'. Note the feeling it carries. When you say a phrase is euphemistic, you are usually standing back and pointing at it, and quite often you are being a bit critical — you are saying the words are softer than the truth. So the word itself is mildly negative in most modern writing, even though the polite instinct behind euphemism can be genuinely kind. Careful writers hear that edge; a lot of learners use the word as if it were neutral and are surprised when a reader takes it as a complaint.

委婉的、婉轉說法的（形容詞）。中文說「委婉」多半是稱讚說話得體，但英文 euphemistic 常帶一點「刻意美化、避重就輕」的批評語氣，這是最容易失手的地方。