Hi everyone, A few days ago I read an interesing article about euphemism in defence warfare on the BBC website. I didn't got the meaning of the few three or four first paragraphs. Could anyboby please help me understand the meaning. Thanks in advance. The main link is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15478001 I want to understand the following passage from the link above: ' The arms trade, and the UK's role within it, relies on business-speak and foggy language, writes Will Self. One of my favourite cartoons was published by the New Yorker magazine way back in the early 1980s. It shows some soignee types consorting - their diaphanous gowns suggest that they're divine, their cocktail glasses that they're merely sophisticated. The location for this party is one of those chimerical realms that only the sparse pen-and-wash of a first-class cartoonist can summon up - it could be Mount Olympus, but it could just as easily be the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Anyway, a svelte, gowned female is introducing another more robust, gowned male to a third partygoer, while announcing, "I believe you know Mars, god of defence." '
The political cartoon is supposed to be funny because in Roman mythology Mars was the god of war, yet the other lady is refering to Mars as the god of defense. So you've got that euphamism thing going on there.
