Separated by a Common Language

Your remark on Water Closet is interesting, as I distinctly remember noting while in Italy that every single bathroom/toilet/dunny that I saw had W.C. on the door. I wasn't at all used to it as we don't use it in Australia and I wouldn't have expected a non-English speaking country to use such an out-dated British term.

In fact, something else that made it stick in my memory is that it featured in a question on one of those bizarre Italian quiz shows. The question was 'what does W.C. stand for in English' and the multiple choice answers were various things whose English translations would have acronymised to W.C., though most were stupid - window cleaner was one, I think.

My point is that in those parts of Europe where W.C. is used, it is as meaningless as Latin tags are to most people. E.g. comes to mind. Everyone knows it means 'example' even if they don't know that it derives from exemplum gratis. Similarly, everyone in Europe may know that W.C. means bathroom but still may not know that it comes from water closet.

Ahem. Exempli gratiâ, for the sake of an example. ("Romanes eunt domus!")

I'll admit to something possibly a little odd here in that I love looking at houseplans. I'll even get books of them out of the library and wish that we could have this bit of that house and that bit of this house and... (I think we can see whence my son gets his autistic tendencies.)

Anyway, the reason I mention this is that many plans still use 'W.C' to identify... that room. As if the little toilet symbol didn't give it away.

So what is AmE for 'ensuite'? We use it (ensuite) down here, but not to mean the room-with-bathroom-(and loo) attached, but rather the small bathroom itself. 'Master bedroom and ensuite'. Hmm, now I think about it, I'm not sure if we put the space between the 'en' and 'suite' as we're supposed to!

Please imagine raised eyebrow for american pronunciation of laboratory - I'd not come across that difference previously.

My the master bathroom in my house has the toilet in a small room that can be closed off from the sinks and bath. I have taken to calling that room the W.C., just because I happen to like the anachronistic sound it has. I remember learning the term while reading The Diary of Anne Frank in school.

And I couldn't agree more about how horrible it sounds to call the whole room "toilet". However, the term that I really object to is "John", as it is my first name.

In my household, for the past two years, the room and the porcelain fixture have been referred to as "the potty, and the act of using it is "going to the potty".

I wonder, are there other words that are typically used with young children who might be toilet/potty training?

Ahh. I have always associated toilet with this definition ...

toilette

noun
the act of dressing and preparing yourself; "he made his morning toilet and went to breakfast" [syn: toilet]

But I also use toilet to refer to the room itself as well as the pan itself. I assumed the room meaning of toilet came about because the room itself was used to make your morning toilet.

Interestingly, I suspect Water Closet was based on the concept of a small room as well - and the early English name for the room itself was a gaurderobe (I think its spelled like that) which eventually turned into the word 'wardrobe'. Which then went on to mean a collection of clothing rather than the cupboards the clothes resided in.

Which actually takes us back to another definition of toilet ...

toi·let /ˈtɔɪlɪt/

8. the dress or costume of a person; any particular costume: toilet of white silk.

Ergh. I left a long comment here earlier and it's not shown up. Ergh.

Allie, I think using W/C might be part of architectural jargon, as I recall seeing it in American plans as well. As for the pronunciation of laboratory, the [br] pronunciation is the one given by the American Heritage Dictionary, though sometimes one might hear a slight schwa between the b and r. One might stress the bor syllable and pronounces the full /o/ only if one wants to sound like a mad scientist.

I reali{s/z}ed late that I left out another BrE term for a toilet-room: cloak-room (which can also mean a room for coats, as it does in AmE). I've usually heard cloak-room used for the type of small toilet+sink room that one might find below a staircase or near the entrance to a house. In one such case, the room had hooks for coats, but otherwise it's just been a toilet room. This proves that Americans don't hold the patent on toilet euphemisms!

Oh, and the other thing I said in that original comment was:

There is no equivalent of en suite in AmE. If there's a bathroom attached to the master bedroom of a house, it's called the master bath(room). There's no special term for a hotel room with a bathroom, as it's generally assumed that hotel rooms will have bathrooms (and double beds. The lack of these in 'single' European hotel rooms can be another shock to the American tourist). For a B&B, they'd probably say that the room has a private bath(room).

I've sometimes seen the bathroom referred to as a toilet in signage for museums, the Field Museum in Chicago does this for the main floor restrooms.

If you like old Victorian house planbooks, like I do, then you'll see "W.C." sometimes, though "Bath Room" is most common.

What do you call them at school? We used "the bogs".

At elementary/primary/grammar school, they were called the (little) boys/girls room. I never used the word "little", but most did. Any pre-school child uses the "potty". After the age of 12 or so, I would just call it the restroom.

The "bogs" comment brings back memories. We used the term all the way to college (in India), and it was understood that it was slang and an abbreviation for "Bathrooms Of Graduate Students" [1]. Imagine why shock and horror when I found out it was a proper English word!

[1] Graduate(BrE)/Under-graduate(AmE)

Thanks for the enlightening article.

Canadians prefer the term bathroom; the only sign for a "rest room" that I've seen North of the border was in Old Montreal in an area highly trafficked by American tourists.

I was under the impression that a bathroom in AmE could only refer to "facilities" (another euphemism at least used in CdnE, it seems to me in AmE also) in a home, and that rest room was the term par excellence when out and about.

In Montreal the Anglo community often refers to the room as the toilet (pluralized in public areas such as restaurants). This might have to do with the French fact (most signs, where they don't just show a man/woman pictogram, read toilettes here). I believe that it's common elsewhere in CdnE, however.

This leads me to a question... How are such facilities indicated in Britain? is there a particular pictogram used?

Hi Tim,

The international pictograms for man/woman are used, as elsewhere.

You're right that restroom is usually for public facilities. One can use bathroom for public facilities, but it's more typically used to refer to a room in a home.

Thanks for the correction, John. I never studied any Latin.

In Danish we use "WC" (sans full stops) pronounced /'ve 'se/ (proper /e/) and "toilet" interchangeably for both the room and the fixture. "Bathroom" ("badeværelse") is used if there is actually a bath/shower there, but I'd never use it for a public facility.

Idly, "toilette" is a word I've picked up rather late and I have somewhat affectedly adopted a French pronunciation. Likely as some sort of selfcencorship.

I'm actually fond of using "the little boys' room", even if it does spark the occasional paedophilia joke ...

In Spanish bathroom or whatever is sometimes the gloriously unconfined váter - stout Cortez in the Pacific? - which, with the same origins, also means odourless.

John, surely that should be "romani ite domum"?? **GRIN**

I prefer to use bog, crapper, shiter (or shitter) or shitehouse, but those are generally considered beyond the pale on either side of the Atlantic. Here or in the US, I usually compromise on "toilet," although over in the States "bathroom" sometimes gets a look-in. I can get away with "toilet" because I am clearly a foreigner and therefore not expected to know any better (this can be a great cover for a great many things in a great many places).

I absolutely cannot bring myself to call it a "restroom" and believe that guy in the museum deserves an award. Restroom is a twee abomination. I mean we all piss and shit, so what's the big secret?

Like most houses in France, ours has a W.C. (a half-bath in AE) and a bathroom (salle de bains). The bathroom has a tub, a sink, and a bidet in it, but no commode (I notice that nobody has mentioned that term). The room called "les W.C." has a commode (aka toilet, itself called un W.C. in French) and a small sink (un lave-mains or "wash-hands").

W.C., singular or plural, is pronounced "vay-say".

When you want to go to the bathroom in France, you ask for les toilettes or les W.C. or even les waters (pronounced "lay wah-tehr").

Because we are two Americans living here, we often have trouble understanding each other because we have both a bathroom where you actually "go to the bathroom" and a bathroom where you take a bath or a shower.

"Where are you going?" one of us might ask. "To the bathroom" is the answer. The problem is the answer doesn't tell you whether the speaker is going to brush his teeth or have a pee.

I do hear the word "commode" sometimes. It sounds very country/hick (I live in North Carolina, USA) and only refers to the device itself. One would not "use the commode" generally, but it would be natural to hear that the commode would be replace when doing renovations.

As recently as the end of WWII in at least some rural US a "toilet" was an "outhouse", a small building used to deficate, and urinate among other things.

Lynne,

When I first realized that I was making British folks laugh when I asked for the "restroom" or "bathroom", I tried very hard to break the speech habit. John used the word "loo", so I did as well. Then, one day, I began to wonder if it was really an ok word to use "in polite company". So one time I asked him, "Would it ok for me to refer to your mother's toilet as the 'loo'?" He chuckled and said yes. So I've used the term ever since.

But when I go to western Canada to run training classes, I have to remember to use the term "washroom" instead.

Janet

I use "washroom" for a public facility with no bath. In a private house I would say "bathroom". "Toilet" sounds crude to me. :)

Oh, and in a private house they sometimes have a room with toilet and sink (no bath/shower) which is called a "powder room". What do Brits call this?

Oh sorry I see now you said it was a "cloak room".

My (considers-himself-upper-class, British ex-army officer) grandfather considers toilet to be an affront. He once rounded on my younger brother, then aged about 9, for using it. (The word, that is not the, y'know, thing itself!)

And commode, I always thought, refers to one of those chairs which have a potty in for people who are unable to get to the normal loo.

I understand true upper-classes would use the word “lavatory”, which, of course, is an euphemism itself being from the Latin” to wash”. They would eschew any word that was twee or had a French origin!

GY, the idea that Americans are more euphemistic than the British has a lot of currency, but I don't know of any research to back it up. I mean, people always bring out restroom as an example, but is that any more euphemistic than "cloak room" or "lavatory"? I think it all may depend on the subject. I find the British more euphemistic when it comes to disability (see the post on learning disability).

It's also not necessarily the case that being less euphemistic = having a "healthier" attitude on a topic. I can think of lots of examples of people using dysphemism (the opposite of euphemism--being extra crude)in order to hide embarrassment about a topic (sex, death, toilet, etc.).

As for commode, in BrE I've only heard it used for an adult "potty chair" of the kind described by Ally. In AmE, I perceive it as a kind of faux-bourgeois word, possibly more Southern. It's a word I understand in AmE, but wouldn't use myself.

ztDon't forget that Toilet itself is likely euphemistic, coming for the French word toilette - to wash and dress etc ….

Loo – I was always told was contraction of an historical warning ‘Guardez l’eau’ - or ‘look out for the water’ as a chamber pot (porcelain potty) was emptied out of an upper window. (although wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilets has a range of other explanations.

I suspect the water closet is probably the only non euphemistic word amongst all of those discussed so far. So even euphemisms go in and out of fashion - and some become just down right unacceptable.

My N.C. family is far from bourgeois. I guess they could be called hick/country, but I would say commode is an archaic term that has held on in certain dialects. It's origin is the same as the term convenience(s), which the dictionaries say is a BE term for lavatory or and AE term for a public toilet.

I meant to mention the term outhouse, too. I get the impression from watching British real estate programs on BBC that outhouse in BE means what we would describe as an outbuilding in AE.

Ken, you are correct. Outhouse is often used to mean 'a building on a house's property' in BrE (actually, I just heard it in Swedish English yesterday), whereas in AmE it only refers to a privy.

Random thoughts and observations:

1)Canadian speech seems to favor 'washroom'. Indeed, this term seems almost a shibboleth when it often appears in the ever-increasing number of movies and tv shows filmed north of the Border, but often pawned off on ignorant Americans as American-made. The number of hard-core Canuck accents on the new 'Battlestar Galactica', for instance, is glaring.

2)On American highways, when a 'rest area' (other terms used in other states) is approaching, 'no facilities' seems the common way to indicate that, if you want to go, you'll have to use the bushes.

3)Most Americans these days are indeed very euphemistic when it comes to the name for the room, moreso for the name for the thing you put the you know what into in that room, and even moreso for the two varieties of the stuff that enters that thing. The 'f-word' is only slightly more odious and unacceptable here, for instance, than the 's-word'.

4)I had a French teacher in the seventies who taught us to say, in French, something that sounded like 'doobluh-vay say.'

5)The US armed forces have their own terms-- the navy favors 'the head', whereas 'latrine' is army usage. There was a famous moment in a MASH episode where a visiting Admiral asked where the head was, and Radar had no notion of what it was, until the Admiral decided to start speaking army.

6)Am I correct to assume that the item known here as a 'urinal' carries the same name in the Mother Country?

7)The term 'Potty' shows up amongst children's speech, yes, but 'potty training' is the standard way of referring to this process. 'Potty' also is the standard term used for the big blue portable toilets known as 'port-a-potties' here-- I did hear the term 'port-a-loo' used for a similar item on an episode of 'As Time Goes By'...

I have recently had a baby here in America, and was surprised to hear many of the nurses using the term "potty" when they wanted to refer to the act of excretion or the utensil into which it is done. I never did find out why there should be an assumption that new mothers or shortly-to-be new mothers should want to immerse themselves quite so rapidly in infantile language. I find it hard to imagine that the same euphemism would be used in maternity units the other side of the Atlantic.

On the subject of avoiding euphemism, I advocate a return to the word "pisspot".

In America, it's a YUR-uh-nuhl. In Britain I think it might be a yuh-REYE-nuhl.

In France, the room where you to to take a leak is the vay-SAY, despite what any French teacher in the U.S. might have told you about doubling that.

My co-worker just used another euphemism which I realized is also fairly common: ladies' room / men's room. Would this be understood in Britain?

I recently read Liza Picard's book _Victorian London_, in which she contrasts the then-new water closet with a competing design called the earth closet, where the waste one produced was covered up by a flush of dry earth. The author also quotes an advertisement for the earth closets claiming that earth deodorises better than water, and that another benefit is a supply of useful manure.

Ken Broadhurst: It's simple. If yer man is going to have a pee, he wants the toilet. If he's going to take a pee, then the bathroom is wanted.
:-)

Ginger Yellow: I think Hyacinth Bouquet is, in fact, very funny (or in rather childish AmE, is too!). Note that Richard, when he has to say his last name -- and it is his last name after all -- still makes it Bucket.

John B.: Water closet is also somewhat euphemistic. To be truly non-euphemistic, we would have to say something like shittery.

The Sybil: And if "pisspot", then "shitstool", too.

I'm just not keeping up with comments while I'm travelling--so glad to see that you're all answering each other's questions!

I just rememered that I have a co-worker who calls it "the necessary room."

I have come to loathe "potty" used as a verb or by adults in adult company just about as much as "restroom," actually more so.

My Texan wife uses "commode" a lot. But here in Britain, as others have said, I have only ever heard it used for the toilet-chair thing used almost exclusively by old, incontinent people.

Oh, and WC is also used in German, pronounced "vay tsay."

Just wanted to respond to your footnote regarding the two meanings of 'déclassé'... While it may not have made it in the OED, my family uses (and has for decades) the term in the way you mentioned, i.e., to refer to something lower-class. However, now that I think about it, my family usually uses the term in reference to someone's behaviour, rather than a particular supposedly 'high-class' object. Déclassé behaviour seems to revolve around such objects, though, and always smacks of lower-class pretension (like buying oil paintings of someone else's ancestors or constantly mentioning how much one's Prada bag cost), so maybe some of the original sense still survives.

(I havn't read all comments so disregard if this is a duplicate link.) Some fairly searous minds have discussed toilet and related matters at this link http://p211.ezboard.com/fwordoriginsorgfrm14.showMessageRange?topicID=117.topic&start=1&stop=20

I think your URL has been cut off, Anonymous. I get 'page not found'.

Anatoly Liberman has another of his delightfully readable bits on "loo" at
http://blog.oup.com/2007/04/loo/

This blog is a truly wonderful thing. I was just wondering how to talk about the toilet/restroom/bathroom in a recent blog so as not to offend AmE readers. I searched your blog, and you gave. Thank you.

By the way, as we Aussies don't like to be subsumed under a BrE/AmE classification are we AusE (!) speakers?

AusE is regularly seen around here--but mostly in the comments section, as I have little direct knowledge of it myself...

I actually think that Men's Room and Ladies' room is the most "preferred" term now. While Restroom and Bathroom etc. are still used, I think that they would probably be considered a standard at the moment.

jangari - thank you for referring to Italian-related stuff as

i) bizarre
and
ii) stupid

within just a few comment lines, that was oh so very kind of you.

Maybe you only had to do with people not knowing what "w.c." stands for during your Grand Tour, still at least we do know that "e.g." stands for "exempli gratia" and not for "exemplum gratis".

Greetings from bizarre, stupid Italy.

As an American living in London, I've taken to using "the Gents" or the "the Ladies" to refer to public bathrooms.

In my hometown in Spain some illiterate person labeled the men's toilet with a W.C. sign and the women's with W.S. I guess he thought W.C. stands for "Wáter de Caballeros" (Gentlemen's toilet) and consequently "Wáter de señoras" should be W.S I found it so funny!

Originally commode was simply the pisspot, traditionally kept under the bed so you didn't have to go outside to do your business during the night. The expression doesn't even have a pot to piss in 'is extremely poor' reflects the near-universality of this labor-saving invention. (Defecating in the commode is, of course, taboo; a woman of my acquaintance did so once as a child, not knowing the rules, and got into considerable trouble with the rural relatives with whom she was staying.)

Technically, the chair that usually nowadays holds the commode is a commode chair. I know this because I just bought one for my wife, who is recovering from knee surgery and isn't able to walk to the bathroom.

Since nobody else has done so, I'll mention the Irish English word "jacks" for a men's toilet. I've wondered if it's cognate to the Elizabethan term "jake" with the same meaning.

I'm Canadian, and I've seen the term "en-suite bathroom" used for a bathroom attached to a bedroom.

And yes, "washroom" seems to be more common then "restroom" here when talking about public facilities, and "men's room/ladies room" get used a lot too.

I've always thought that W.C. was an American term - I would never think of using it. I remember my mother (who was doing some sort of course at the time) writing something about Winston Churchill once and abbreviating him to W.C. throughout - she'd never heard of the term and neither had the rest of our family.

I would also use 'go to the bathroom' as a euphemism, and I wouldn't find it strange to use 'bathroom' for a room with no bath. We have a 'loo' in our house (toilet and sink), but we've always called it the cloakroom.

Okay. I love this blog but after the fourth or fifth time reading "better half" in lieu of "husband" I just couldn't go on. It gets tiresome. Regardless of why it's being done or its useage among some readers or the blogger herself, I personally just can't stand the way it jumps off the screen and slaps me while I'm trying to read. So off I go. But much luck and love and pudding to the rest of you.

Ah, the throne room!

Hmm, I'm American and I've heard and used "en-suite bathroom" many times.

It strikes me as funny (odd, peculiar and humourous) to hear Americans use the term potty as an euphemism for toilet "wanna go potty?" used to children and even the elderly...
Here in New Zealand a potty is a portable, usually plastic object for a baby to use to urinate or defecate when she is being toilet-trained!

I realize I commenting WAY after the fact here, but I came here via a Google search. I was trying to find what BrE U speakers use when referring to "toilet paper." You know, since "toilet" is non-U. "Tissue"?

There's 'lavatory paper' or 'lavatory roll'. (Google them and you'll see some examples, many more for 'paper'.)

Thank you so much, Lynne. (I was just reading Sarah Lyall's "Anglo Files," which is why I was curious.)

One very frank fictional society in Ursula K. Le Guin's fabulous novel The Dispossessed actually does call the room the shittery and the object a shitstool.

Oh my this brings back memories. I was in Kindergarten in 1969 in Las Vegas when a new kid from England joined the class. I was appalled when he said he had to "go to the toilet." To my 5-year-old ears it sounded vulgar and wrong. "Normal" kids said "I have to go to the bathroom." I can still remember the kid's name and what he was wearing!

I have a British husband and I still giggle when he says he has to go to the "loo". It never occurred to me that "going to the bathroom" would sound odd to British ears. I remember the term "lavatory" was (and still is) used on airplanes and I learned it was a "fancy" name for "bathroom".

Oh my this brings back memories. I was in Kindergarten in 1969 in Las Vegas when a new kid from England joined the class. I was appalled when he said he had to "go to the toilet." To my 5-year-old ears it sounded vulgar and wrong. "Normal" kids said "I have to go to the bathroom." I can still remember the kid's name and what he was wearing!

I have a British husband and I still giggle when he says he has to go to the "loo". It never occurred to me that "going to the bathroom" would sound odd to British ears. I remember the term "lavatory" was (and still is) used on airplanes and I learned it was a "fancy" name for "bathroom".

Great discussion. At (Br) school it was 'Bog' and this continued in youthful male company into the early twenties but not when mixing with elders or with girlfriends.

I first heard 'loo' at girlfriend's home when in my late teens and adopted this and have used it generally through adulthood although I also use 'lavatory' quite a bit and other names less often.

Finger posts in the street used to indicate PUBLIC CONVENIENCE in the 50s, 60s & 70s and within commercial buildings CONVENIENCES (no PUBLIC to avoid the implication a the public could walk in off the street solely to use the conveniences). Both now generally replaced by TOILETS.

One on-line discussion group where I spend much time, (UK dominated but worldwide English-speaking participants both ex-pat and others) has a recurring conversation every few months when someone mentions how distressed they are to hear people refer to the lavatory as a toilet because such usage is 'common'. A lengthy debate follows which inevitably includes complaints about the use of 'bathroom' and other euphemisms for the facilities but also complaints about euphemistic terms for bodily functions themselves.
I have to admit that I cringe to hear 'potty' used in reference to anyone over three years old.

'GENTS' and 'LADIES' also quite often used except in the domestic context. I would usually ask for one of these rather than any generic term. This is essential in pubs, often evolved from houses or old buildings over many generations rather than purpose built so that these facilities can be far apart. There was an unfortunate fashion, which I hope has passed, in 'amusing' signs for the facilities in pubs. "Cocks" & "Hens", "Colts" & "Fillies", "Bulls" & "Heifers" "Ducks" & "Drakes" and so on, often linked to the name of the pub. Oh, how we laughed.

'Privy', though archaic, is not extinct either.

I just thought that the term restroom came from the fact that you relieved yourself in one, thus resting.

Since nobody else has done so, I'll mention the colloquial "john" and euphemistic "comfort station" in AmE for a toilet room. Additionally, toilet room seems the preferred choice to designate a bathroom private toilet in hotel accommodations.
Interestingly enough, another meaning of lavatory in AmE is sink/washbowl/washstand/BrE & AmE washbasin. Now, if you'll please excuse me, I have to use the bathroom...

Very late, but I'm wondering if anyone's thought about the etymology of loo (which, fwiw, I would understand but hear as unidiomatic). I've always assumed it was a euphemism for water closet by way of Waterloo, but of course that couldn't be the case if the term predates Wellington's victory. (Then again, I don't suppose it could, since indoor plumbing only arose afterwards.)

Ted, allegedly the term comes from the French "l'eau". Apparently the contents of the pot were regularly emptied out of the window into the street below, with a cry of "Gardy loo" ("Gardez l'eau!") to warn unsuspecting passers-by. I don't know how true that is, though - it may be an urban legend.

Personally I grew up calling it the "loo" - "toilet" was definitely a "no-no" in my household. At school, for some obscure reason, it was called "ponty" with no definite article.... And, of course, children were taught to ask to be excused if they were caught short during a lesson, but many of them asked if they could "Go and be excused" as though that were the name of the activity....

Growing up in the Boston area, at school the bathrooms were referred to as "the basement" as that's where they were located in older school buildings.

The more I read about differences between Am. E and Br. E the more I find that the many times my southern dialect seems to be in greater agreement. Toilet is used here for both the actual item, and the room. Though my Grandmother uses the term Water Closet.

In my lower middle-class family I was brought up to say "lavatory"; not that "toilet" was frowned on, it just wasn't the word we used for it.
If Booktrash is still reading this - in the multivolume biography of Churchill begun by his son, his name is abbreviated to WSC. (The forename Winston is traditional in his family from long before the days of ubiquitous water closets.)

I reached this thread via a link entitled a certain small room. A new one on me, but I've often heard the smallest room in the house.

When I was a small boy, the only words to be heard outside the home were toilet, lavatory and the much ruder bog. Inside the house the word was la (rhyming with Shah ), which I think came from my mother's home town of Swansea (a city in the South of Wales).

Loo was nothing remotely like the omnipresent word it is in Britain today. When I first heard it I thought it was childish and rather twee.

Avoidance phraseology I hear includes Would you like to wash your hands?, Shall I show you the geography of the house? and the less opaque Would you like to use the facilities?

Tom Lehrer slipped a Russian avoidance phrase into his Lobachevsky song on plagiarism (click here). The supposed book review from Izvestia , which Lehrer translates as 'It stinks', actually means 'I'm going where the Tar himself goes on foot'.

(The alleged review from Pravda is actually the opening sentence of Moussorgky's Song of the Flea. Also translated by Lehrer as 'It stinks', it actually means 'Once upon a time there was a Tsar, on whom there lived a flea.)

The letters WC on a door in France are very helpful to English speakers. Less helpful are doors in Germany and other countries with 00.

Looking this up for confirmation, I discover that Unicode has interested itself with what I would call toilet door symbols. (Wikipedia insists on 'restrooms'.) Should you ever need them, these include:

001F6B9 ��
001F6BA ��
001F6BB ��
001F6BC ��
001F6BD ��
001F6BE ��

Sorry! Those Unicode characters did show up on the posting as it left my computer.

To see what they look like you can visit the Wikipedia page where I found them
here.

David Crosbie wrote: Inside the house the word was la (rhyming with Shah )

I haven't heard that particular euphemism for years! In fact, I had totally forgotten about it, but I think it was the one used in the junior house at my school - as I said above, in the senior house one said "ponty" with no definite article. ("I want to go to ponty!"), but I think in the juniors we went to the la! At home, we went to the lav, and then later to the loo.... unless we wanted to "go and be a lady" (my mother's term, as she would never let us say "lady" when we meant "woman" unless she was titled) which really applied to public loos.

Adam Kuban asked what Brits call toilet paper. Well, I call it 'toilet paper'; someone of higher class than me (they would say 'than I') would call it 'lavatory paper', as Lynne suggested. 'Bog roll' is school (and later) slang. 'Loo roll' is a handy BrE euphemism that will always be understood and I doubt will offend anyone.

In England I buy my toilet paper from the US company Costco, which apparently sells the same Kirkland product here as it does in America. I say this because it is labelled "Bath Tissue"! Now 'bathroom tissue' I could understand, albeit with some mental jarring because 'bathroom' doesn't mean the same to me as my BrE 'toilet', but I would have thought that even Americans who say 'bathroom' would wonder why anyone should need to use tissue in the bath itself. That seems to be euphemism taken about as far as it can go (until 'home tissue' comes in).

Any term that doesn't refer directly to the excretory function or the matter excreted is in some sense euphemistic, even toilet. (I assume the paper takes the name of the room as descriptor and so is euphemistic at one remove.) But then function and matter both have a medical term, an 'Anglo Saxon' term and a number of synonyms that are euphemistic to varying degrees. The Australians have many more circumlocutions, but I suspect their use is jocular rather than euphemistic. If only we could all settle on one set of international terms and not feel uncomfortable using them. After all, Victoria R died over 100 years ago, yet the dysfunctional prudery continues?

Just a quick mention for 'khasi' and its spelling variants, in common use when I was in the British Army as slang for toilet.

At the risk of these comments lastng longer than a roll of Andrex, I'd like to put a word in for 'bumf', meaning lavatory paper. It's short for 'bum fodder', and is now more usually used to mean pointless paperwork - suggesting that the paperwork's best use would be to wipe one's sit-upon.

I'm not sure that KeithD is correct in assuming that 'toilet paper' took its name from the room - I suspect it's even further removed. I'm certain that the very old Oxford English Dictionary in our school library did not list 'toilet' as having any connection with the WC, but did list 'toilet paper' as primarily paper used 'for toilet purposes such as shaving' (or some similar wording), and only gave 'paper for the privy' as a secondary meaning.

It would certainly make sense if 'toilet paper' originally had a non-lavatorial meaning that would have allowed it to be referred to without too much embarrassment: that would also fit with archaic euphemisms such as 'curl papers' that implied that the purchaser was going to use the paper for curling their hair and not for any unmentionable activities.

I'm always astonished about how universal 'WC' has become in continental Europe, having been neglected in Britain for years; though it's beginning to be seen a little more frequently on signage in the UK. I recently found a sign on an eastern European train that instructed the user not to flush the closet in stations, in five languages: in every language 'WC' was in evidence, except in English, in which they had stuck, pleasingly, to 'lavatory'.

Now, please excuse me: I must go and see a man about a dog.

What a delightfully amusing page! Article, comments and all... I've been thoroughly entertained and all smiles or laughs since I got here.

I must proudly confess that I am quite partial to the (somewhat obsolete) AmE Southern terminology for the "waste receiving' furniture: COMMODE. It is so underused and underappreciated!
I derive great pleasure from using the term as a conversation piece/starter.

I was born and raised in the mid-Atlantic South (TN, NC, VA), but my father—an educator by profession—was mostly prepared in the UK, or in the Aristocratic deep South. So I ended up adopting a fair amount of his word-choice habits.
In referencing the room with the commode, my usage varies by context and mood. Toilet is my most common choice, for the mere purpose of mildly agitating high-strung people or strangers, but I don't hesitate to use: the head, the can, bathroom, restroom or the facilities. Again, to confuse or discombobulate people— or in an attempt to make them feel ignorant or slightly violated.

I also relish inquiring about the location of the bidet, not only for similar reasons just mentioned, but also because I have had a lovely bidet attachment for the last decade and I am quite unaccustomed to the exceedingly unpleasant, unsanitary, uncomfortable and barbaric task of attempting to clean my back side with flushable tissue paper! So uncouth!

Hello Ginger!

Fatherland is decidedly patriotic and "Mother Country" is delightfully matriotic. Look that up in a dictionary and you will not find a trace of an obvious omission. Entries for matrimony and matrix can be expected, but reading between the lines we find that "matriotic is so unmentionable and unthinkable that not even a space may be left to indicate a gap in our ability to think. Banish the thought!"

If "urinal" can be accepted as receptacle for urine then it seems logical that "faecal" can be accepted as a receptacle for faeces. Apparently "faecal" is accepted exclusively as an undesirable medical condition, and it should lack ambiguity in reference to such conditions. However, when you desperately need to shit, the need for arbitrary social niceties and locally expected obscure evasive formulations will not seem polite or be appreciated.

This usage of "faecal" is only a suggestion and an indication that when we need something then there should be a clear common word to indicate that need. In this context, a failure to communicate may lead to a need for a change of clothes and a bathroom or a shower-room.