Basic Trope: Someone describes a crime with a tamer-sounding synonym.
- Straight: When Alice accuses Bob of blackmailing her, he insists she doesn't call it blackmailing.
- Exaggerated: Alice accuses Bob of blackmailing her. He threatens to tell everyone every single one of her secrets if she ever says that word again.
- Downplayed: By the way Bob uses words such as "influence" and "leverage," it's clear he's referring to blackmail even though he avoids that specific word.
- Justified:
- Bob is a Knight Templar who does not view his actions as crimes.
- Bob has always disliked the word blackmail, because he finds it offensive to people who send their mail in black paper.
- Bob hates the word blackmail because he finds it phonetically unpleasant.
- Bob is worried someone might overhear the conversation.
- It really isn't blackmail. Alice is using the wrong Insistent Terminology and Bob is trying to correct her.
- Bob engages in Political Overcorrectness and he doesn't like the derogative "blackmail" because it is homophonous with "black male."
- Bob is Totally Radical and "extortion" has the universally super-cooler "X".
- Inverted:
- When Alice accuses Bob of blackmailing her, he asks her to say it again, because he likes the sound of the word.
- Alice tries to dodge explicitly using the word "blackmail", but Bob tells her just to call it what it is.
- Bob's "aggressive exchange of valuables" IS just him desperately trying to trade his Action Comics #1 for Alice's large diamond, but he insists on calling it "blackmail."
- Subverted: "Blackmail is such an ugly word. But yes, that is what I'm doing."
- Double Subverted: "...But still, don't call it blackmail."
- Parodied:
- Upon accusal, Bob procures a thesaurus and lists several words he thinks are better than "blackmail."
- Bob insists on calling it "darkmessage" or any other bizarre synonym.
- "'Blackmail' is such an ugly word. Why don't we just call it 'extortion'?" "Isn't that the same thing?" "...Ain't it. Bugger."
- Bob struggles to produce a euphemism for "blackmail" and agrees to just call it blackmail. "For now."
- Zig-Zagged: When Alice accuses Bob of blackmailing her, he insists she not call it blackmailing. Later she calls it blackmailing anyway and he doesn't complain. But the next time they see each other, he bashes her for saying blackmail.
- Averted: Bob has no problems with the accusatory term.
- Enforced: "We need to demonstrate that our show is set in The '30s!"
- Lampshaded: "Honestly? My word choice is the biggest issue here?"
- Invoked: Bob studies the law around blackmail so he can demand things of Alice forcefully without it being "blackmail."
- Exploited: Alice says "blackmail" repeatedly to annoy Bob.
- Defied:
- "Blackmail is such a dirty word. But for your sake, yes, it's blackmail."
- "Buddy, you can call it whatever the fuck you want, but this is blackmail and you know it!"
- "You wanna call it 'Susan'? Seriously? I'm gonna use the correct term, thank you very much. At least it won't make me feel like I'm stuck in amateur hour."
- Alice is so pissed off in general that when she hears Bob talking about how he doesn't likes to use the word "blackmail" because it's not cool enough in his eyes and wishes to use the word "extortion" instead, she finally snaps and gives him an extensive lecture and even goes as far as telling him that he can go ahead and release the information anyway because under no circumstances will she pay an imbecile who can't even bother to use the correct term for his crimes.
- Discussed:
- "Some say that blackmail is an ugly word. I think it's just right for what I do."
- "You know that using 'Susan' to refer to blackmail is gonna make the conversation sound a whole lot stupider, right?"
- "You keep saying that you're not offering me a bribe, when you are continuously offering me money and/or items of high monetary value as rewards if I perform an illegal action that will benefit you. That is the very freaking definition of the word "bribe"!"
- "Criminal enterprises 101: 'blackmail' is you threaten to post those pictures of me having posed for Penthouse on my church's bulletin board. 'Extortion', as much as we can agree that it sounds cooler with the 'x', means that I grab this baseball bat here and then I say I will break every bone in your body if you don't give me what I want."
- Conversed: "Oh look, they said 'blackmail is an ugly word.' I wonder what other stock thirties phrases they'll use."
- Implied: Alice begins to say, "bla—" but then corrects herself when Bob opens his mouth.
- Deconstructed:
- Bob is on trial, and he insists the person suing him not use the word blackmail. They eventually sue him for something much worse and he gets a much worse punishment than if he had just been sued for blackmail.
- Alice accuses Bob of blackmailing her. Bob sues Alice for libel.
- Bob's usage of double-talk is supposed to be (allegedly) less intimidating. Alice instead finds it more intimidating, assumes the absolute worst of Bob, and makes a decision to take proper measures against this threat that she probably wouldn't have thought otherwise.
- Played For Laughs:
- Bob insists on the most comically inappropriate alternative words possible for his crimes.
- Bob uses a veritable logorrhea of lesser-sounding terms to describe his crime.
- Alice finds Bob's replacement, inoffensive term more insulting than "blackmail" for reasons that oddly don't involve being blackmailed.
- Played For Drama:
- Bob demanding Alice to never use the word "blackmail" is a small and petty show of the power he holds over her, but it still is a show of the power he holds over her.
- Alice explains to Bob that the term he is using instead of "blackmail" (which by itself is a more awful crime, like extortion) stands for and Bob decides that the other crime is better and promptly threatens Alice with it, putting her in even more dire straits.
- Played For Horror:
- Bob likes to name his mass shootings with terms like "the proactive reduction of free radicals".
- The way Bob keeps applying the allegedly lesser term completely eliminates the "lesser" part.
"Back" is just an ugly word. I'd rather you use "previous".
