I’ve noticed something about the way the English language evolves. When something has a discomforting connotation, we find euphemisms to describe that thing which elide the source of our discomfort. We refer to the act of having sex as “sleeping together.” Someone who has died has “passed away.” Someone who’s been fired was “let go.” That’s all fairly obvious; what I find interesting is that, over time, the euphemisms themselves pick up the taint of whatever uncomfortable thing they are describing and become distasteful in turn. Thus people look for a euphemism for the euphemism, one which hasn’t (yet) become distasteful. But the source of the discomfort is not the word, it’s the thing it’s used to describe, and so, inevitably, the new euphemism in turn becomes distasteful.
Take the bathroom. The straightforward word for the place where one deposits one’s bodily wastes is “toilet.” But that itself is a euphemism. It originally meant to wash and dress, as in “the lady has just completed her toilet.” As it came to mean what it means today, those wishing to inquire where they could relieve themselves avoided using it, opting for other words which, as “toilet” originally did, described adjacent activities. “Bathroom,” of course, refers to the place where one bathes. But I remember as I was growing up how some of my contemporaries weren’t comfortable saying “bathroom,” and opted instead for “lavatory,” which describes a sink for washing one’s hands. Another option was “restroom.” (On a ride home from college with a classmate of mine, he liked to say “Stop at the next place that has a rest room. I gotta take a wicked rest.”)
In Britain the common term is water closet, or W.C. There’s also “privy” and “garderobe” (“cloakroom” in French), which seems like a stretch as euphemisms go. Jennifer and I refer to the little room off the kitchen with a toilet and a sink as the “powder room.” Realtors would refer to it as a “half-bath.”
This inclination toward euphemism occurs not just in English, by the way. On her blog, The Straight Dope, Cecil Adams sites bathroom historian Frank Muir as noting that the toilet was referred to as the “House of Honor” by the ancient Israelites and the “House of the Morning” by the ancient Egyptians.
In any case, whatever word we come up with eventually becomes distasteful, and polite society drifts toward a euphemistic alternative — until such time as that alternative itself becomes tainted.
I suspect that’s at partially why those who used to be called “crippled,” became “handicapped” and then “disabled,” a term which itself is being supplanted in some quarters by “differently abled.” But what makes any of those terms objectionable is not that they are inherently disparaging; it’s that they became freighted with society’s discomfort with those who have physical infirmities. I suspect that endeavoring to be referred to in a dignified way by seeking a respectful word may be a never-ending quest — at least until those with disabilities are no longer a source of discomfort for society at large.