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Unusual Euphemism / Theatre

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  • The off-Broadway musical Altar Boyz had a character claim he had just come out of rehab for "exhaustion". Thereafter, the play makes a Running Gag of using "exhausted" as a euphemism for "drunk", leading to such lines as "Don't blame me, I was incredibly exhausted at the time!"
  • At the first act of Angels in America: Perestroika, Prior refers to his ejaculate as "spooge", a term even Belize seems not to have heard before.
  • A Boy Scout skit involves a Scoutmaster teaching a kid to say "whisper" instead of "pee." Hilarity Ensues when the kid later tells another adult that he desperately needs to whisper this instant, and is told to "Whisper in my ear."
  • The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged) has a song about the "begattin'" habits of the Generations of Adam:
    They were begattin' in the fields
    Begattin' in the straw
    Begattin' fully clothed
    Begattin' in the raw
    They were begattin' on the sea
    Begattin' on the land
    Begattin' with a partner
    Is better than your hand
  • The Tennessee Williams play Cat On A Hot Tin Roof was fairly loose with profanity for The '50s, but it still avoided using a certain four-letter word, as shown by lines like "Rut the goddamn preacher!" and "Frig Mae and Gooper, frig all dirty lies and liars!"
  • Li'l Abner, "The Country's In The Very Best Of Hands":
    Just sits around on their you know what—
    Up there they calls 'em their thighbones.
  • From Les Misérables, we get this...interesting way of describing having sex with a hooker in "Lovely Ladies":
    "Think I'll drop me anchor in that harbor over there!"
  • Jo uses "Christopher Columbus!" when surprised or distressed in the musical adaptation of Little Women.
  • Matilda has Mr. Wormwood call his hypothetical second son's penis his "thingie", "whatchamacallit", "whojamaflip", and "doo-dah".
  • In The Merchant of Venice, Launcelot employs a Hurricane of Euphemisms to describe his father's promiscuity: "...for indeed, my father did something smack, something grow to, he had a kind of taste..."
  • Shrek: The Musical has a couple.
    Pinocchio (in "Story of My Life"): Man, I tell ya, sometimes being a fairytale creature sucks pine sap!
    Donkey (after Shrek hits him): Mother Hubbard, that hurt!
  • The "Jet Song" from West Side Story uses "buggin'" and "mother-lovin'", as well as the phrase "when the spit hits the fan." Though the writers also used sanitized street language at the end of "Gee, Officer Krupke" ("Krup you!"), they must have forgotten about "schmuck" earlier in the song, which had to be censored on the original Broadway cast recording, even before it was (differently) censored in the movie - without breaking the rhyme in either case.

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