Mind your language | 26 April 2018

In Competition No. 3045 you were invited to provide a poem about euphemisms.
 
You avoided politics and sex (mostly), preferring instead to focus on the language of dying and the words and expressions that enable us to sidestep the D-word (according to David Crystal, there are more than 1,000 words for death categorised in the Historical Thesaurus). I much admired Alanna Blake’s twist on Keats’s sonnet (‘Much have I dabbled in linguistic lore/ And many inexactitudes have used…’) and Max Ross’s neat acrostic. Hamish Wilson, Max Gutmann, Ann Drysdale and David Silverman also deserve a special mention. The prizewinners printed below earn £30 each. The extra fiver belongs to Bill Greenwell.

‘Fair maiden, may I introduce my fritz,
My percy, and my python, also peg?
It’s from my nether regions’ naughty bits:
My trouser snake, my meat and middle leg.
 
‘I haven’t got a wrinkle in my winkle,
My johnson, rod and pole, my horse and hose —
My harry likes to have a little tinkle,
Or hang out with my other down-belows.