Interesting that commode means convenience. Every Day Things thread has mentioned commode as the toilet bowl, and the word is often used by itself to mean a commode chair, that is one with a chamber-pot. Also (in UK at least) public toilets are known as public conveniences.
I suppose the link between "convenience" and toilets must be quite strong!
Rod
Dear Rod: You are right. Discommode means to lock up the restrooms.
And it would certainly be inconvenient to lack a toilet when you need one.
Also (in UK at least) public toilets are known as public conveniences.
I've always been wary of the PC movement.
Brandon
toilet is just an other euphemism for chamber pot-- and the original meaning of dressing or grooming still exists in toilet water, ~ soap, or ~powder.. getting washed and dressed is still making ones ~...
we seem not to really want to have a word for "a receptical for bowel movements" and use all sorts of euphemism-- a recent rebroadcast of the BBC/Irish television production "The Aristocrates" about the Lennox sisters uses the line, about George II -- "he ate breakfast, and retired to his room to perform a natural function, and died while doing so.."
so we have commodes, and loo's, and water closets, and cloakrooms, and thrones (and throne rooms) and every other sort of way of saying that which we don't want to say-- and any number of vulgar ways, too--("take a dump" being the most common now days-- and certainly not the crudest..)-- the english have the bit more refined "spend a penny" and ladies would most often "powder one's nose"...anything-- but saying what it is we intend to use (and why!) --which we really can't do-- since there is no proper word!
Does anyone know if it's really true that the words 'crap' and 'crapper' come from Thos. Crapper, the inventor of the WC? Or is this an apocryphal anecdote?
PS Aenigma suggests "crash" for "crapper".
In the Navy we called it the shitter. That good enough for ya?
Thomas Crapper
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There really was such a man. He had patents on plumbing devices, but not on the toilet bowl flush system
Faldage reports:
In the Navy we called it the shitter.
And the head?