That Which Shall Not Be Named

As you can tell from the title of this post I don’t even like the word m*n*p**s*. Mind you, I’m not even there yet. But as a woman approaches the half century mark, it’s definitely on the radar. So I went to look up the word m*n*p**s* in other languages. I was hoping m*n*p**s* in French would have a certain je ne sais quoi about it. No such luck. M*n*p**s* in French is m*n*p**s*. I moved on and checked out a half dozen more languages. Hungarian had an interesting translation: klimax. That holds a certain amount of promise, don’t cha think? But it turns out that in most languages m*n*p**s* sounds almost exactly like m*n*p**s*. Which brings me to the German translation: wechseljahre. Now to my ear that sounds an awful lot a like a vexing year. That’ll do. So when my doctor asks me questions about that which shall not be named, I think I’ll say: “Oh, you mean wechseljahre? I’ll let you know when I get there.” But privately, maybe I’ll think about it in Hungarian...

My research:
In Dutch: menopause
In French: menopause
In German: wechseljahre
In Hungarian: klimax
In Italian: menopausa
In Portugese: menopause
In Spanish: menopausia