EUPHEMISMS FOR DEATH

There are so many euphemisms (also known as doublespeak) when people speak of death. In terminal illness, many find it hard to speak the term death at all. Some of them are 'losing' the person. In some sense, the live person is lost to no further contact. The person is forever unabailable. It is also used as in 'losing one's virginity'; lost but never to be recalled again as is life then death.

A bit more colloquial is the term, 'bought the farm' whose origin is, according to Merriam-Webster: "The origin of this phrase is uncertain. It is 20th century and all the early references to it relate to the US military. The New York Times Magazine, March 1954, had a related phrase, in a glossary of jet pilots' slang: "Bought a plot, had a fatal crash."
That clearly refers to a burial plot. The 'bought' in that case probably doesn't suggest any actual or potential purchase, but to an earlier use of 'bought', i.e. being killed. This dates back to at least the early 20th century. This example from 1943 isn't the earliest, but it does make the meaning explicit. It's from Cyril Ward-Jackson's It's a piece of cake; or, R.A.F. slang made easy: "He's bought it, he is dead - that is, he has paid with his life." Specific references to 'the farm' come a little later. There are reports of the phrase being in use in the US military from 1955 onward. Here's a citation from 1963, in Ed Miller's Exile to the Stars: "The police dispatcher says a plane just bought the farm." There are a few suggested derivations for the phrase. One, put forward in a 1955 edition of American Speech, is the idea that when a jet crashes on a farm the farmer may sue the government for compensation. That would generate a large enough amount of money to pay off the farm's mortgage. Hence, the pilot paid for the farm with his life.

The second theory is that military men might dream of returning from the battlefront and settling down with a family to a peaceful life down on the farm. If someone were killed his colleagues might say, 'well, he bought the farm early', or similar. Well, yes they might, and there are numerous sentimental US films where dialogue like that wouldn't be out of place. That's not to say the phrase was coined that way though.

A third suggestion is the idea that, if a serviceman was killed in action, his family would receive a payout from the insurance that service personnel were issued with. This would be sufficient to pay off the family mortgage.

My twopenneth is on the last explanation but, given that we don't have the full evidence, that's just speculation."

Euphemisms seem to be used when people a) have difficulty speaking directly about subjects that might cause pain to the listener, b) can't face the concept of death themselves for their own reasons, c) assume that the custom, through whatever impetus, has set a social protocol which people are often relieved to follow. There may be other reasons such as the politically correct notions hold, I think, often incorrectly. Helping people face reality seems to me a better move towards fostering acceptance of an undeniable fact.

There are many more euphemisms for death, but in the interest of keeping each entry reasonably short, I will not detail them, only list some.

bite the dust (perhaps referring to the quote: ashes to ashes, dust to dust)
buy the box (coffin)
croaked (possibly referring to what is ;the death rattle' or other sound as vital organs stop working, lungs fill, or the body ceases to function as it should)
flatline (as in the first indication of brain death on a monitor)
going into the fertilizer business (about all the body can convert to for usefulness in death)
immortally challenged (in today's world of politically benign phrasing)
kicked the oxygen habit
left the building
living-impaired (another use of the trend to make potentially painful subjects as gentle-sounding as possiible)
pushing up daisies (no doubt this wild flower has covered many graves)
gone to sleep, sleeping (neglecting the lack of breathing that usually accompanies the state)
kick the bucket (this referred to the bucket on which one stood to hand themselves. There are some explanations to that effect with other speculations added)
passed , passed away (Whatever an ‘away’ is, it is assumed you have gone beyond it.)
gone to the great Beyond)
is with God, is in Heaven, is with the angels now, is with Jesus or whomever else you may be placed with according to your religious belief.

As the saying goes, the only sure things are death and taxes. Today most of us have little control of the degree to which either will touch our lives but, I firmly believe, both have to be faced directly and how one wishes to attend to them should be made clear.