--- title: Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes», a lesson of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Nobody likes to say "we failed" or "I made a mistake", so people reach for softer words: a company whose new phone cau --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Euphemisms](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/) / Soft words for hard things: failure an… # Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes Lesson 33 of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school: 23 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/0/) — Nobody likes to say "we failed" or "I made a mistake", so people reach for softer words: a company whose new phone caught fire may call it "a hiccup", which makes a big failure sound as small as a hiccup. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/1/) — Teachers and bosses use gentle words to be kind, such as "room for improvement" on a school report, which really means the work is poor. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/2/) — Officials and businesses use words to hide or spin: "human error" hides who exactly made the mistake, and "a correction" makes a crash in prices sound like a neat tidy-up. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/3/) — Friends use jokey slang to laugh at their own mistakes: "it all went pear-shaped" or "I had a brain fart". - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/4/) — "Didn't go to plan" means failed or went wrong. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/5/) — "Not our finest hour" is a humorous way of saying a bad failure or embarrassment. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/6/) — "A setback" means a failure, made to sound like a small step back. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/7/) — "A hiccup" means a problem or failure, made to sound small. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/8/) — "A glitch" means a fault or bug, usually in a machine or computer. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/9/) — "An oversight" means a mistake caused by carelessness, something someone forgot or missed. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/10/) — "Human error" (official) means someone made a mistake, without saying who. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/11/) — "A brain fart" (slang) means a silly mistake or a moment of forgetting. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/12/) — "A slip of the tongue" means saying the wrong word by mistake. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/13/) — "A misstep" means a mistake. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/14/) — "Room for improvement" means the work is poor. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/15/) — "Needs improvement", on a school report, means the work is poor or failing. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/16/) — "Below expectations" (official) means poor, worse than it should be. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/17/) — "Underperforming" (jargon) means doing badly. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/18/) — "A correction", on the stock market (where shares, small parts of companies, are bought and sold), means a sharp fall in prices. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/19/) — "Challenging" (jargon) means bad or very difficult. - [21](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/21/) — "Gone sideways" (US slang) means gone wrong. - [22](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/22/) — "Gone south" (US slang) means gone wrong or got worse. - [23](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/33-failure-and-mistakes/23/) — "Came a cropper" (UK) means failed badly or fell over. - ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: religion and fate and failure and mistakes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/32-religion-fate-failure/) - next →: [Soft words for hard things: failure and mistakes](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/34-failure-and-mistakes/) - ↑ back to [Euphemisms](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/)