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Comment by trashchomper

2 days ago

As an Australian I always find it funny going places and having to remember which dance-around word everyone uses for "toilet". Washroom, restroom, bathroom, there's so many!

'Toilet' itself is a euphemism, an archaic term for dressing/washing room and/or the act of washing up

  • “Toilette” is still used that way in normal everyday French. “Je fais ma toilette” - I’m washing up/getting ready/getting dressed/doing my morning hygiene routine/etc.

  • It was pretty surprising to be reading some old books on Project Gutenberg and seeing the word "toilet" being used meaning "outfit" or "wardrobe".

Toilet, bog or lav in the UK are some options.

The easy to remember terms and will work nearly anywhere without giving offence are: "loo" in a residential property or "gents/ladies" for a non-residential property.

Toilet is the object, not the room it's in

  • Only in some parts of the world. In many it's the room and the object

    • Soviet apartments had a separate rooms for the toilet and the area with a bath/shower/sink. The area behind the toilet was usually a hinged wall that could be opened to reveal the entry point for utilities.

      I assume toilet hands were an unspoken issue, because there was no possible way to traverse from the toilet room to the washroom without touching anything.

      For a complete tangent, I’ll mention that Soviet toilets had a “poop shelf” so that people could eyeball their stool to gauge their health. One flaw of this design is that there was no odour suppression offered by toilets that immediately immerse stool in water.

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