# A diachronic evaluation of gender asymmetry in euphemism

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.02083 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02083/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Jun 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Diachronic Word Embeddings Reveal Statistical Laws of Semantic Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.09096/) (2016)
- [Analysing Lexical Semantic Change with Contextualised Word Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14118/) (2020)
- [Statistically Significant Detection of Linguistic Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.3315/) (2014)
- [Survey of Computational Approaches to Lexical Semantic Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.06278/) (2018)
- [Dynamic Word Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08359/) (2017)
- [Self-Supervised Euphemism Detection and Identification for Content Moderation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16808/) (2021)
- [Pick a Fight or Bite your Tongue: Investigation of Gender Differences in Idiomatic Language Usage](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00335/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [CATs are Fuzzy PETs: A Corpus and Analysis of Potentially Euphemistic Terms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.02728/) (2022)
- [Searching for PETs: Using Distributional and Sentiment-Based Methods to Find Potentially Euphemistic Terms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10451/) (2022)
- [A Report on the Euphemisms Detection Shared Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13327/) (2022)
- [When Semantic Overlap Is Not Enough: Cross-Lingual Euphemism Transfer Between Turkish and English](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16957/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The use of euphemisms is a known driver of language change. It has been proposed that women use euphemisms more than men. Although there have been several studies investigating gender differences in language, the claim about euphemism usage has not been tested comprehensively through time. If women do use euphemisms more, this could mean that women also lead the formation of new euphemisms and language change over time. Using four large diachronic text corpora of English, we evaluate the claim that women use euphemisms more than men through a quantitative analysis. We assembled a list of 106 euphemism-taboo pairs to analyze their relative use through time by each gender in the corpora. Contrary to the existing belief, our results show that women do not use euphemisms with a higher proportion than men. We repeated the analysis using different subsets of the euphemism-taboo pairs list and found that our result was robust. Our study indicates that in a broad range of settings involving both speech and writing, and with varying degrees of formality, women do not use or form euphemisms more than men.