The euphemisms about menstruation, and what we lose by their use

Euphemisms for menstruation reveal a deep-rooted discomfort with speaking about periods. Professor Bettina Bildhauer examines how language shapes menstrual stigma and why clear, confident communication is crucial for health, policy, and everyday life.

Have you heard people say ‘shark week’, ‘Auntie Flo’, or ‘the painters are in’? These are euphemisms commonly used for ‘menstruation’ in English. Germans might say ‘strawberry week’, the Taiwanese ‘coming to wash’, and in French you might even say ‘the English have landed’.

People across the world avoid speaking about menstruation, as if saying the very word ‘menstruation’ could somehow stain them. (The irony is that some linguists believe even the word ‘menstruation’, Latin for ‘monthlies’, to be itself a euphemism, as the ancients thought the word ‘blood’ too powerful to say.)

This age-old taboo and silence adds to menstrual stigma in a vicious circle, making it ever less likely for people to choose to communicate about it publicly and clearly. How we speak about menstruation – and that we speak about menstruation – matters. If we do not have clear words for menstruation, this leads to real health inequalities when people are too embarrassed to talk to their GPs about menstruation-related problems clearly and convincingly.

Scottish-born poet Hollie McNish has a very funny piece about how to give yourself the courage to talk to your GP about your vulva: practice by pretending you are talking to a car mechanic about your Volvo.

The truth is that GPs are likely as embarrassed as their patients at physically examining them. One of McNish’s practice scenarios goes: ‘If the mechanic doesn’t look at the Volvo but instead tries to diagnose the problem with closed eyes and just offers you thrush cream for the five-hundredth time instead, say: Could you actually look at my Volvo please?’.

The Scottish Government’s ‘Let’s Call Periods, Periods’ campaign tried to tackle this in 2020 as part of their efforts to make Scotland a more period-friendly country. The Scottish Period Products Act 2021 was the first law in the world obliging local authorities to make products available for free to everyone who needs them. But products are only half the solution: menstrual literacy – being able to understand and communicate what goes on in our bodies clearly and without resorting to euphemism – is much more important. There is not much point in having a compact applicator tampon if nobody has told you how to use it, as I know from my own recent experience.

A lot of communicating well about menstruation is owning it. Research we have done in the Menstruation Research Network (MRN) shows that even the politicians who campaigned for the world-leading and taboo-busting Scottish law spoke about people who menstruate in the third person – (‘they’) but used the first person (‘we) for themselves as the parliamentarians helping ‘them’. We academics are also good at distancing ourselves from menstruation, even though most of us have experience of menstruation. This is part of a strategy even found in ancient medical texts, where men writing and exchanging texts about women’s menstruation gave them added authority and prestige, though they describe menstruation itself as shameful and unclean.

Communication is culturally specific, and not all language strategies work in all contexts. In the MRN, we recommend avoiding terms like ‘feminine hygiene’ or ‘sanitary products’ in High Income Countries, because that suggests that menstruation without products is unhygienic and that you have to be feminine to menstruate. But in Low and Middle Income countries, using such terms is often an important communication strategy for making arguments for better sanitation and hygiene as part of menstrual campaigning.

Historical uses of terms like ‘the curse’ or ‘menstrual pollution’ show some of the age-old roots of menstrual stigma, but our premodern forebears were actually often less intolerant than we like to think: ‘the curse’, despite its alleged Biblical roots, was actually only used for menstruation from the 18th century onwards.

Menstruation and menopause researchers and activists often debate passionately about the best terms to use for our work and aims: Period poverty? Eye-catching, but sounds too negative. Period dignity? More positive, but makes it sound like menstruation without products can be undignified. Period pride? Great, but what about people for whom menstruation is a right royal pain? Peri-menopause? Technically correct, but a bit prissy.

What matters even more than terminology though is that we talk about menstruation and menopause at all: Continuous, clear communication is key.

Professor Bettina Bildhauer FRSE, Professor of German, School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews

This article originally appeared in ReSourcE ReSourcE Autumn/Winter 2025.

The RSE’s blog series offers personal views on a variety of issues. These views are not those of the RSE and are intended to offer different perspectives on a range of current issues.