EUPHEMISMS OF THE NOMINATIVE FIELD “STEALING”, BASED ON METAPHORICAL CONCEPTS (A CASE STUDY OF RUSSIAN, ENGLISH, AND GERMAN)

Using the example of the nominative field “stealing”, the article presents one of the most productive ways of euphemization which is euphemistic metaphorization. The paper presents Russian, English, and German euphemistic lexemes, denoting stealing as a kind of criminal behavior, designed with the help of conceptual metaphors. The study shows that in the Russian language stealing is euphemized through the metaphorical concepts of GAME, PROFESSION, ORDER RESTORE; in English - ACTION FORCE, WATER; in German - ACTION FORCE, SHOPPING, ACTION, and some zoomorphic metaphors. The main ideas in focus, which help to express stealing euphemistically, are the ideas of harmlessness, legitimacy, and necessity.