Friday, May 25, 2018

halacha - Halachot of Lashon Naki (clean speech)


What is the halachik source, if any, for lashon naki (clean speech)? Is there a portion of Talmud that deals with the specifics? On the surface, it seems to be employed inconsistently, by which I mean there are times where the torah or chazal will go out of their way to use euphemism instead of the proper noun or description (the below example from Pesachim is great). However, other times we find very graphic descriptions for instance, of female genitalia in shir hashirim, (albeit assumedly metaphorical) or tzoah rosachas (gitin 57a) with no compunction for 'lashon naki'.



Answer



The Talmud discusses this issue in Pesachim 3a.


There it brings a number of instances where a verse uses extra letters to avoid saying a negative word. Here's one example that it brings:


The verse by Noach (Genesis 7:8) says to bring into the ark animals that are טהורה (pure) and animals that are אשר איננה טהורה (lit. that are not pure). This is instead of the shorter and more conventional טמאה (impure). I know this doesn't work out in translation so well, but in Hebrew it uses 8 extra letters to avoid saying 'impure'.


See there for more proofs and examples.


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