People we've "lost" this year

The BBQ Pit
1

When someone dies, they’re not “lost.” Stop fucking telling me that we’ve LOST someone.

We just “lost” David Bowie? That’s too bad. Maybe he’s hanging out at a SoHo loft, or on holiday in Tahiti. He’ll probably turn up soon!

Oh wait, no he won’t. Because HE’S FUCKING DEAD.

With the possible exception of Elvis, every celebrity we’ve ever “lost” has never been found. Can we just call a spade a spade here? Why do people have to indulge in pathetic euphemisms? What’s wrong with “dead” or “died?” They’re succinct and descriptive.

Sometimes I “lose” my keys, or a sock. Once or twice, I’ve even lost myself while driving around. Boy, was my face red when I got off on the wrong exit of the New Jersey Turnpike, and my heart ceased to beat while I experienced complete and total brain death at the cellular level! We all had a good laugh about that one later, after my body had cooled to ambient temperature and begun the decomposition process in earnest.

Stop goddamn saying that someone is “lost.” There is nothing wrong with simply saying that someone has died.

P.S.
A special “fuck you” to CNN and other news media who continually use this ridiculous charade of phraseology, e.g., http://www.cnn.com/specials/world/obit-2015

2

You do know that there are other meanings to the word lost beyond “can’t be found,” don’t you?

I hate euphemism as much as the next internet guy, but your rage is misplaced. We use the word lost to mean ‘things that are unrecoverable’ or ‘things no longer in the world’ all the time. It’s what the word means. It may not be as brutal or specific as ‘dead’ but it is by no means an obtuse or stretched meaning.

3

I heard last year the Seahawks lost the Super Bowl, but how can that be? I know exactly where it is.

Do you also object to people telling the bereaved, “I’m sorry for your loss”?

Sorry, I don’t think you have a case. This is at least a common euphemism, and maybe not even a euphemism but rather one of several legitimate meanings of the word “lost.” “Lost” doesn’t have to mean “can’t be found.” Consult any dictionary; I think you’ll find one of the meanings is something along the lines of “something or someone that you no longer have or that is beyond recovery.”

4

Yeah, it’s not a euphemism, it’s describing something else.

5

Really weak sauce for a first post and a pit thread. A little over the top with the umbrage taken with media outlets. :rolleyes:

Ooh, let’s argue over definitions.

Welcome to the Dope BrazenPirate, hope this isn’t an early flame out. Try looking at other forums.

6

We lost Lemmy, but that was last year.

7

Why should we be more brutal in our reactions to death? It’s already a brutal experience, having a loved one die, Why should we avoid gentle words in a time of loss?

8

There’s nothing wrong with the language.

“We lost someone”

“He died”

When the object of the sentence is the living, it makes sense to frame it in a way how the living would see the dead. You cannot say “We deaded someone” or “We died someone” or “We deathed someone”, the correct phrasing is lost. If you want to frame it from the point of view of the deceased, its perfectly accepted to say “He died”; nobody would say “He lost himself”.

9

We lost Agatha Christie once, in the “where did we put her?” sense. Well, I wasn’t part of it - it was before I was born.

But it happens. Maybe Alan Rickman will still turn up.

10

On the bright side, Donald Trump is also 69…

11

Some of those euphemisms got a bit creepy when we had a kid.

“Did you put the Devilling down?”

“Yes, I just put him to sleep.”

Who the hell am I kidding; we love it. For a kid whose punishments include the ‘Corner of Shame’, the ‘Stair of Despair’, the ‘Basement of Woe’ (not to be confused with the Basement of Whoa!’), we revel in that shit. After Battlestar we switched to ‘boxing’ the boy at night.

12

Get lost, OP.

13

Based on his post, I certainly hope that that SD loses BrazenPirate soon. There’s a lot of stupidity on this board, but his stands out, and not in a good way.

14

I guess he wants to say “I’m sorry so-and-so died.” While I get it, it is a bit blunt. And I am not all the time “sorry” they died, I may not even have known them. Someone says “My mom died five years ago.” I never met the mom, and have no feelings about her at all.

What I am sorry about though, is the feelings the person in front of me presumably went through. So I say “I’m sorry for your loss” and let them dictate how to proceed.

I don’t say “I’m sorry she died.”

15

I “lost” my husband permanently in November. I’ll damn well phrase it that way if I want to and I suppose others can just get over it. On the other hand, if you prefer to be pedantic over something so inconsequential to you, yet vitally important to another, beware of being labeled a wankified git. Just saying.

16

(adds “wankified” to dictionary of favorite words)

17

Exactly.

It’s not a “phraseology”, it’s an accepted definition of the word.

From Dictionary.com…

From OED:

…but I guess the fact that words have more than one meaning would be lost on the OP… a lost cause, so to speak… sometimes I lose myself… ROTFLMAO… sorry, it seems I’ve lost it!

18

By the OP’s logic, you should be reported for wishing death on him.

Seriously, though, I generally hate euphemisms, and while “loss” is, in a sense, a softer version of “death”, I wouldn’t really consider it a euphemism here. Yes, the person is dead, but as that person is celebrity, fans aren’t really mourning that person’s death in the same way as a family member would. Further, one feels grief and mourns loss in general, not just death. One mourns the loss of a relationship, lost opportunities, old times, whatever.

Really, the most direct way of thinking about what happened is that we no longer have that person’s talents. As a fan, I’ve literally lost the thing I’m a fan of. And even for people I do know who have died, they’re literally gone from my life. I think it ultimately gets to the real heart of the issue, in addressing the grief itself rather than just the death. And in that way, I think it’s actually a more appropriate way to look at celebrities that have died. Hell, I wouldn’t even use loss to describe all dead celebrities. If a great mind or talent dies, it’s a loss. If it’s just someone famous, maybe a rich business man or a politician, they’re just dead.

So, yeah, I don’t like other death euphemisms like passed away/on, expired, or perhaps the one that really bothered me at the last funeral I attended, or as they put it that it was her “going home”. Yes, even if you’re religious, I still find calling it “going home” to be an attempt to completely dodge the idea that someone is dead. I don’t want to beat around the bush with the fact that someone died, but I just don’t see loss that way.

And, really, just like with “pass away” it’s stuck. I don’t like it, but I even find myself using it sometimes, and we all know what it means anyway, so it’s not even much of a euphemism anymore. It’s just not worth the effort to resist it. So even if it does bother you, it’s not going anywhere. I’d suggest redirecting your ire at something you can maybe affect.

19

We lose Kenny pretty much ever week.

20

Kenny sniffing glue, he was 12 years old
Fell from the roof on East Two-nine
Bowie had leukemia, 69,
he looked like 55 when he died,
he was a friend of mine.
Those are people we lost, lost.