Internalised in the structure of every human language are figures that function as surrogates of speech and communication acts. These figures are important in language because they serve specific strategic roles. They enrich the language, endow it with aesthetic beauty and enhance its communicative potential, rhetorical appeal and signifying capacity. Tiv language is not an exception to this linguistic

imperative. These figures are many and they range from metaphor, simile, personification, and paradox to alliteration, litotes, metonymy, irony, and most crucially, euphemism, among others.

Many times, the figures intentionally deviate from direct literal meaning formations to produce rhetorical or figurative meanings in ways that are emotional, aesthetic and intellectual (Forsyth 2014; Baldrick 2008; Kennedy 2006; Quin 1999; Corbett & Connors 1999). Euphemisms accomplish this task as they mask the embarrassing meaning of events and present them in noble and appealing ways. The cardinal concern of the

present paper i s with euphemism as a speech and communication surrogate within the dynamic of Tiv language.