The Scrivener: Into The Cave
So what do you call it? The loo? The bathroom? Brian Barrett considers the terminology for that place to which we all have to go.
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I was born with a head of black hair, poor eyesight, and no euphemisms. In our family in England in the 1930s and 40s, little boys didn’t have anything between the navel and the knees. Not even euphemisms, poor little mites.
There were, however, roundabout ways of saying what one did with those unnamed parts. My mother referred to the functions as ‘do dirty’ and ‘do water’.
The early translators of the Bible into English were more circumspect. Have a look at I Samuel 24:3, which tells of Saul going into a cave to ‘cover his feet’. The Authorised Version (1611) and the Revised Version (1884) use the same term. The Revised Standard Version liberated it in 1952 and allowed Saul to go into the cave to ‘relieve himself’. Whew! What a relief!
It was with some hilarity that we welcomed a more recent USA translation, The Living Bible, which takes Saul ‘into a cave to go to the bathroom’. For non-American readers, visions of porcelain receptacles, gleaming taps, bottles of shampoo, and toothbrushes in little holders along the wall. Wow!
What should we call that place to which we all must eventually go? My father, who was born in 1879, called it the W.C. Older readers will know that that means water closet. In the 1960s, I chose to refer to it as the loo, because that was the term used by a very well spoken and extremely polite lady I met.
There’s still some argument about where ‘loo’ came from, but it seems to be related to the cry of French ladies in bygone centuries when they threw the contents of the chamber pot out of the window. Unsuspecting pedestrians below were warned, ‘Gardez l’eau!’, look out for the water!
When I arrived in Australia in 1968, I discovered that the place is actually called a ‘toot’. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary offers eight different kinds of toot, the first of which is ‘an isolated hill or man-made mound suitable as a place of observation’. Two other definitions relate to copious drinking. Yep, that figures.
‘Toilet’ has been acceptable for years but I’m told it is now out of favour. So why don’t we return to the good old ‘lavatory’? After all, we all know what that means, don’t we? Or do we?
Lavatory comes from Latin lavare, to wash, lavatorium, a place such as a wash-basin where one could wash. That usage continued for over 500 years until about the middle of the 19th century when it became a euphemism for toilet (loo).
Words related to lavatory include launder, originally one who washes, which is a version of lavender, which in turn comes from Old French lavandier, a male washer. Meanwhile, the plant named lavender comes from Latin lividus, bluish in colour. It is thought by some, but not all, scholars that the two were brought together in speech because washerwomen used lavender to perfume the washing.
Oh, it’s so complicated. I reckon I’ll go back to referring to that room as The House of Lords. After all, it’s a place for long sittings and Liberal peers and quite a lot of paperwork. And sometimes a load of... oops, sorry.
Copyright © 2003, 2007 Brian Barratt
