Definition of "euphemize" [eu•phe•mize]

• To speak of or refer to by means of a euphemism. (verb-transitive)
• To use euphemisms. (verb-intransitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "He said that 15 to 20 percent of losses was what "everyone learned to live with in 1991 and 1992" and that aid workers even coined a term to euphemize the theft - "traditional distribution" - because even though the food was getting looted, it still ended up in local markets, having the ancillary effect of reducing overall food prices and making food more affordable for the poor."
• "If it be birds that ultimately euphemize human death and decomposition in Silas' hands, it's for no other reason than that our fear of death, a fear necessary to life, overrides even our fascination with the death of our own kind, the deaths of the animals nearest to us in the evolutionary chain, and so on down the line."
• "Middle management will euphemize poor results, failures, screw-ups when talking to upper management so that they don't look bad, but then the leaders have incomplete (bad) information and the company can't make good decisions."