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This is because the scary subject of cancer used to be taboo that no one wanted to talk about it. They felt (irrationally) that even saying the NAME could bring cancer - so they used a euphemism The Big C..as in "Did you hear? Mike has the Big C." I believe this was as recent as the late 60s early 70's - it was a stigma to have cancer...now (in the U.S. anyway) it is not so much of a stigma, and people can say Cancer, and even Breast Cancer, which no-one could say even when I was growing up in the late 70's early 80s - it was not ok to say "Breast"either!

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12y ago

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