Where is the loo.....???!!!

[Nostromo]

This reminds me of an incident during my very first visit to the US in 1991. We had just arrived at Denver airport where we were met by resident relatives with whom we were staying. On the way to their house in Peublo, we stopped at a roadside diner for supper. After some time, still jetlagged, I went over to one of the staff and asked him where the loo was. He looked at me blankly and said 'She went home a couple of hours earlier'. It turned out that he had a female colleague named Lou(ise). After mutual explanations, he started laughing so hard that I thought he was going to bust a gut or something. He was still amused when we left half an hour later.

[esprit]

Being professionally in the toilet business for my sins ( help!) I can tell you that the Americans use the words restroom, bathroom ( meaning loo not where you bathe) or in more polite circles powder room. I always wondered what the derivation of the word restroom is!!!

[davebrighton]

Am I right in thinking that in the US the word rest room is used for a toilet in a public place and a bathroom is your own toilet at home.Or the other way round cant remember

[MMFAN]

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by davebrighton
Am I right in thinking that in the US the word rest room is used for a toilet in a public place and a bathroom is your own toilet at home.Or the other way round cant remember

[/quote]

You've got it. To an American the "toilet" is the porcelain fixture itself, so saying "I am going to the toilet" sounds a little crude. The most used word in a public place is restroom, and yes it is a euphemism for "toilet". I always thought restroom (or powder room sometimes for women's toilets only) was derived from the fact that some women's "toilets" have a lounge-type area in them. And it's a bathroom in your house because it does have a bath in it, ones in restaurants don't, and it's again more pleasant to say bathroom than toilet. Make sense?

[esprit]

That is correct. There are also a lot of quirky names for restroom in public places depending where you are, guys and dolls, cowboys and cowgirls, he and she etc.

[Ray&Sarah]

Yes our son got rather an odd look when he asked for the loo in a restaurant in the US. We quickly added restroom so all was forgiven.[msnsmile2]

[Pikey1999]

On the old steam trains carriages there used to be two separate cubicles, a 'Toilet' and a 'Water Closet'.
One for your 'needs', the toilet, and one for a wash afterwards, the water closet.
When the train companies required more seating space to gain more ticket income then the two cubicles where combined into one.
This room continued to be called a Water Closet, no doubt because calling it a 'Toilet' may have been too crude back then.
The name 'Water Closet' was eventually shortened to W.C.!

I read that somewhere but isn't it sad that I remembered it...

[feathersonline]

Sorry to drag this one up again, but does anyone know why we Brits call it the 'Loo' anyway?

[chrisj]

Here is the answer

There are many theories about this word, but few firm facts, and its origin is one of the more celebrated puzzles in word history. The one thing everybody agrees on is that it#8217;s French in origin, or at least a corruption of a French phrase. But which phase, etymologists are still arguing about. But we#8217;re fairly sure it#8217;s modern, with its origin having been traced back no further than James Joyce#8217;s Ulysses in 1922.
So that seems to dismiss entirely the theory that it comes from the habit of the more caring British housewives, in the days before plumbing, of warning passers-by on the street below with the cry #8220;Gardy loo!#8221; before throwing the contents of their chamber pots out of upstairs windows. (It#8217;s said to be a corrupted form of the French gardez l#8217;eau! or #8220;watch out for the water!#8221;.) And equally the late date refutes the idea that it comes from the French bordalou, a portable commode carried by eighteenth century ladies in their muffs (you will never again be able to look at a picture of a lady wearing a muff without thinking what she#8217;s carrying inside it). It is also said that it#8217;s a British mispronunciation of the French le lieu, #8220;the place#8221;, a euphemism.
Another theory, a rather more plausible one, has it that it comes from the French lieux d#8217;aisances, literally #8220;places of ease#8221; (the French term is usually plural), once also an English euphemism, which could have been picked up by British servicemen in World War One. But James Joyce may equally well have derived the expression as a punning reference to the battle of Waterloo, from the sequence: water closet#8212;waterloo#8212;loo. Or it may be that several linguistic forces converged to create the new word.

[chrizzy100]

<blockquote id="quote" class="ffs">quote:Originally posted by feathersonline
Sorry to drag this one up again, but does anyone know why we Brits call it the 'Loo' anyway?
[/quote]

What we call the loo is what Americans very politely call the restroom , the derivation of this word is from a long time ago when people used to shout "gardez l'eau" (the French equivalent of "look out for the water") and throw their human waste out of the window onto gutters in the street. More amusingly,a history professor informed his class that loo was an abbreviation for Louis XIV, one-time king of France. It was, he says, adopted by the British so that every time they went to the bathroom they were symbolically "pissing on France". True or not, it's an interesting thought. On top of all of this is the possibility that in large mansions the toilet was always numbered room one-hundred to save any embarassing confusions.