In some hospitals, coded is a euphemism for "died" ("That woman in 304 coded last night"), drawing on the code nomenclature commonly used in this setting, such as "Code Blue" for heart failure. One doctor was startled to hear "demise" used as a verb when he was told that a patient had demised. Professionally speaking, doctors' patients don't die, they experience a negative outcome, one that might have resulted from a therapeutic misadventure. Most often, doctors, like the rest of us, simply say a patient went ("she went peacefully") or that they've lost a patient. The latter led one immigrant doctor to observe how odd this seemed to him when he arrived in the United States: "I wanted to say, 'Well, we didn't really lose your husband,'" this oncologist told medical researcher James Sexton. "'We know where he is. It's just that he's not breathing any more.'"
from Euphemania by Ralph Keyes
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