synonyms for bathroom On this page you'll find 19 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to bathroom, such as: lavatory, restroom, powder room, toilet, washroom, and water closet.
Privy is a very old word for what we'd call the bathroom, with it earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) from 1225. The word privy comes from the Old French privé, “intimate friendly; a private place.” No matter how friendly, privies were often outside, and so chamber pots were used instead.
THE LOO. The 'loo' is very common in the UK & Ireland, and is a safe and polite way to say toilet.
Loo. Toilet. An outdoor toilet is a Dunny and an indoor toliet is called a loo. So you might say, "You can use the dunny out the back on the loo in the front." And that's how you say "toilet" in Australian.
Loo is an informal yet polite British term for toilet. The word “loo” has interesting origins and can be traced back to Medieval Europe, when chamber pots had to be emptied from bedroom windows onto the street below.
The medieval toilet or latrine, then called a privy or garderobe, was a primitive affair, but in a castle, one might find a little more comfort and certainly a great deal more design effort than had been invested elsewhere.
Water Closet
A “toilet” was just a dressing table or washstand, a meaning that eventually got flushed away when water closets adopted the moniker. In the 1880s, the earliest flushing water closets were made to resemble familiar chamber pots and commodes.
We've looked into the stories behind a handful of them. The WC - Still in use today, the abbreviation WC stems from the term “water closet” which is what we used to call toilets in the Victorian era.
Dunny can now be used for any toilet. The word comes from British dialect dunnekin meaning an 'earth closet, (outside) privy' from dung + ken 'house'. First recorded in the 1930s but dunnekin is attested in Australian sources from the 1840s.
'The loo' is generally a safe term to use and likely won't offendanyone. 'Lavatory' is a good option for people looking for a very formal word to use in very formal occasions. In the United Kingdom, some people will shorten lavatory to just 'lav' and when they do it becomes quite informal.
The not-so-slight rivalry between the English and French aristocracy dates back over a thousand years, so unsurprisingly, the Royal Family doesn't use this word of French descent. Instead of toilet, they'd refer to that particular room as the lavatory or loo.
The outhouse of the 1770s was known as a “necessary,” or a “privy.” Benjamin Franklin's brick-lined “privy pit” is even marked at the spot of his former Philadelphia residence of 1787. Several years ago, sanitation was voted as the world's biggest medical advancement since 1840.
Synonyms of women's restroom (noun bathroom for women)
girls' room. ladies' room. little girls' room. powder room.
So with time on his hands, Harington came up with Britain's first flushing toilet, which he called the “Ajax” (apparently from “a jakes,” a common slang word for an outhouse). In 1596, he even detailed his work in a tongue-in-cheek book called “A New Discourse upon a Stale Subject: The Metamorphosis of Ajax.”
The word “latrine,” or latrina in Latin, was used to describe a private toilet in someone's home, usually constructed over a cesspit. Public toilets were called foricae. They were often attached to public baths, whose water was used to flush down the filth.
In a medieval castle, a garderobe was usually a simple hole discharging to the outside into a cesspit (akin to a pit latrine) or the moat (like a fish pond toilet), depending on the structure of the building.
Another name for master bedroom and master bathroom is “primary bedroom” and “primary bathroom”.
Most European countries are short on public restrooms, but I can teach you how to sniff out a biffy in a jiffy. If you ask for a "restroom" or "bathroom," you'll get no relief. Instead, say "Toilet" or "WC" (short for Water Closet); these terms are direct, simple, and understood.
Because it had water, it became known as the water closet. Somehow the name stuck, and plumbers continue to refer to a toilet as a water closet. That's what the “WC” imprinted on most toilets stands for.
Bog roll. Taken from the 16th-century Scottish/Irish word meaning 'soft and moist,' bog means restroom or lavatory. Bog roll, naturally, is an idiom for toilet paper.
For a lot of people coming to the Netherlands it's an unpleasant surprise. What is the typical Dutch toilet? The bowl has a unique shape which includes a sort of shelf, a little bit above the water level.
Leaves, sticks, moss, sand and water were common choices, depending on early humans' environment. Once we developed agriculture, we had options like hay and corn husks. People who lived on islands or on the coast used shells and a scraping technique.
Water closet and W.C. were common euphemisms then, coming after crapper became tainted. Toilette was a fancy word for a wash-up; one made one's toilette. Toilet, bathroom, and bowl are later euphemisms, after W.C. was retired.
The head (pl. heads) is a ship's toilet. The name derives from sailing ships in which the toilet area for the regular sailors was placed at the head or bow of the ship.
A room containing just a toilet is called a loo or a toilet. A room containing a bath/shower and a sink is called a bathroom. A room containing a bath/shower, a sink and a toilet is called a bathroom, a loo or a toilet. The name for this can vary on what you're doing in there.