www.alphadictionary.com

Today's Delancey Place gives a running etymology of the word "toilet" I found interesting. Doc might want to develop it.

"Perhaps no word in English has undergone more transformations in its lifetime than toilet. Originally, in about 1540, it was a kind of cloth, a diminutive form of 'toile', a word still used to describe a type of linen.

"Then it became a cloth for use on dressing tables. Then it became the items on the dressing table (whence toiletries). Then it became the dressing table itself, then the act of dressing, then the act of receiving visitors while dressing, then the dressing room itself, then any kind of private room near a bedroom, then a room used lavatorially, and finally the lavatory itself. Which explains why toilet water in English can describe something you would gladly daub on your face or, simultaneously and more basically, water in a toilet. ..."

Go there if you want to read about a wonderful, if disgusting, story of a crucial development in civilization.

Always interesting to see how words have changed or adapted their meanings over the years. My question now is, as toilet came into being in 1540 or thereabouts, where did people go to the bathroom prior to that? As in, what was the thing called?

I should imagine that bathroom is another one, as is lavatory.

Anyone have any "potty" humor to share?

There must be dozens of words for places where you can spend a penny, or 30 or 40p nowadays. I can think of old words such as privy (private), jakes (Jacques?) and of course loo (l'eau?).
And when I think of my 93-year-old mother's long sessions, I can understand why across the Pond you call it a rest room.

'Scuse me, must powder my nose...
Eileen

I am revisiting this word that has lain fallow for almost a year now.

From Tidewater Virginia and throughout the South, a polite word for the greatest invention of mankind, the flush toilet, has been the necessary.

The Romans called it the necessarium, or at least the erudite among the early Virginians thought they did.

I'm sure the Greeks had a word for it but it is too late at night for me to contemplate Greek.