Every once in a while, you get a chance to peer through the smoky veneer of sales, to wipe away the coffee-stained crust of marketing and stare right at the bare, shriveled stump of reality. Going to buy a car is not usually one of those times. 

However, it is your opportunity to revel in one of the strangest words that money has ever added to the English language: pre-owned. 

As in, pre-owned car. As in, someone else once gunned the motor and squealed through the Council Rock parking lot in this car. As in, someone else dropped an onion ring or two on the floorboard. As in, used car. 

A word so fake that Webster won't even include it in its dictionary, pre-owned has actually been polluting American English for almost 40 years. It was first ridiculed in a British magazine around 1964, and made official doublespeak status in the book "Words in Sheep's Clothing" in 1974. 

That means that for 40 years, nobody has been fooled. "Everybody knows they're used cars," said Charlie Wightman, the manager of a Cadillac dealership in Bristol Township. "I rarely use the word. Someone in the 1970s decided that would be a good way to sell cars. But if it's a used car and it's dirty and there's a ton of miles on it - you can't fool anyone with that word." 

Apparently there is a class hierarchy of auto dealerships. (Alert the Marxists!) If a dealership largely sells new cars, 'pre-owned' is often sprinkled over the tops of the one-year-old Hondas like holy water.

"But up here in the ghetto, we say used," says Joe Rossi, manager of First Class Auto Sales, whose office building almost burned down last week. "Can you please put in the paper we're taking donations to rebuild?" 

But it doesn't trouble me as doublespeak. I, too, know that no one is being fooled. What I don't like is the unending stream of insults to our intelligence heaped upon us by the worlds of advertising and marketing. 

Gently used. Refurbished. Reborn. 

"Estate jewelry, that's another one," said University of Delaware associate marketing professor Meryl Gardner. "The implication is supposed to be that some incredibly wealthy, tasteful person passed away, and for some reason their heirs have to dispose of it. The truth is, estate jewelry is used jewelry." 

Happy words wrapped around the same old stuff. 

"If you're trying to sell a crib and your son threw up in it 76 times, you don't have to say that," said Dr. Gardner. "Our standards of communication with consumers don't require that we specify that. The buyer can make whatever assumptions they like." 

Standards of communication: here's where the problems begin. It makes absolutely no sense to me that the standards of communication between buyers and sellers should differ from those of any other two people in the world. At least when it comes to gratingly obvious practice of flipping words about like pancakes. 

At this linguistic wedge, the world splits up into two groups: the people who fall for it, and get scammed on stocks, carpets, or pills, and the people who roll their eyes and squirm in agony. As the euphemisms drift down thicker and thicker every year, I find myself wishing that a snowplow would come along. 

After all we just want a used car. A large cola. A shampoo that smells good. A good lipstick. A small camera. Toothpaste that cleans our teeth. Deodorant that prevents stinkiness. And gasoline that powers our cars. 

Not a pre-owned Supersize aromatherapy Hydratime Elph with Colorbond Complex and Total Fresh Stripe, with Body Heat Activation and that - oh that - 5th Tank Feeling. 

In case you hadn't figured it out, no such thing exists.