‘Human’ is an euphemism

A word is a user friendly sound bite that serves as virtual reference (like a mark on a map) for a referent, real or imagined. The sound bite is not the referent. A sound bite, to wit, a word, is an alternate (i.e. beyond the experienced) means of transferring (or translating) information about a referent, for instance an experience. Such a transfer means (or translation) is called a metaphor (Greek: metapherein ‘to transfer’).

A euphemism (from Greek: eu = ‘well’ + pheme = ‘speaking’) is a metaphor made user friendly, indeed a sugar coated metaphor. It serves to disguise the actual sound bite reference (hence metaphor) of the observer response in order to make the former acceptable.

The euphemism ‘human’ rather than the metaphors anthropoid, animal, mammal, predator, and so on, is misused by the human to hide the unpleasant, hence threatening reality of being a wholly biological, hence transient functions complex. In short, the euphemism ‘human’ is deliberate ‘sweet’ deception that generates in the human the delusion of being ‘other’ than, taken to mean ‘above’ an animal, therefore being superior (as suggest in ancient Jewish mythology). However, that sweet delusion (indeed, dementia) serves to increase human survival capacity.

See the Enlightenment metaphor