I do not like it because it sounds juvenile. “Urinate” is the proper term.
“I’ve got to URINATE! {urinate} {urinate}”
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I’m English. “I’ll just go and, er…” usually suffices, but other people in the family say things like “I must just pay a call” or the old favourite “Going to see a man about a dog.” Or just leave the room without a word - why does anyone need a running commentary on the state of your metabolism?
I’m a nurse and many of my friends are also in health care. We, of course, make terrible dining companions for the easily squeamish.
No one says they have to go “pee” or “poop” or whathave you without getting asked for a full report on returning. Volume, colour, odour, texture, smell, etc are all asked about. That happens once, then other people just “go to the washroom.”
At home I default to pee and poop, but my mentions of actually producing such waste are more along the lines of “May I please get 3 minutes to shit in peace?”
When I was in my 20s “breaking open the seal” was the term for the first urination of the night when out drinking. Folk wisdom at the time stipulated that once you had your first pee you would be going frequently from then on.
Another thing we would say. “I have to go the bathroom, I have TB”. TB was our parlance for a tiny bladder, aka we have to “pee.” To an outsider, it must have sounded dreadful, all these 20 something women with tuberculosis going to the bathroom together.
At a former workplace we used to say we were “going down the hall” for a minute. The bathrooms were down a hallway.
You reminded me of when hubby and I did a 12-day Colorado River rafting trip a few years ago. The guides instructed us to poop in portable toilet boxes they brought along, but to urinate directly into the river. After 12 days of that, we had a firm habit of saying we were “going to the river”. Once back home for about the first two weeks we kept saying that.
When I go, I go…I don’t need to discuss it.
Exactly. I feel like so many now feel the need to tell you about it.
Yeah, but they never tell you about the interesting stuff, like the tint or the smell.
“Piss” is the expression I hate. I can tolerate “pee” but piss sounds really coarse. I work in paeds and it seems a lot of families teach their children to say piss. It makes my flesh crawl every time I hear it.
I work at a busy animal ER. When we leave the floor, our team needs to know we’re leaving and they should have some idea for how long. “Gotta pee,” is the quickest way to convey that. So that’s what I say.
I find the need for “delicate speech” about something everyone does multiple times a day, rather tedious. Could be that I’m in a medical field. Jeez, the idiot euphemisms people come up with when trying to convey their pets’ pee and poo problems. No, sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about when you tell me your dog went tee tee, or couldn’t ta ta, or had difficulty with a boo boo. WTF.
“‘Restroom break?’ Forty years I’ve been asking permission to piss.”
“Excuse me for a moment” usually suffices for me.
When my cat’s IBD flares up, I mention that he has Poop of Doom. But then I follow it up with specifics (to the vet). I did some nursing for a while, so specifics aren’t a problem; I do, however, go overboard trying to not gross out everyone around me.
Perfect thread/username combo.
I work at a government safety board. The Board Members are presidential appointees and are styled as “the Honorable.” On several occasions, I have intervened to change official correspondence to remove a reference to them as “BMs.”
A very polite German exchange student who came to spend a summer with my family had some difficulty getting us to understand what he needed when he asked where could he “make big.”
For a while, my office was on a kick of referring to the bathroom as the Room of Requirement from the Harry Potter books.
At long work meetings we sometimes have bio-breaks. That’s vague, it could refer to your biological need to stretch your legs before you turn to stone. But it’s understood that visitors be told where the restrooms are at this time.
Point Percy at the porcelain
Use the facilities
Drain the holding tank
Delete a file
Dump some ballast
Go take a healthy one
Recycle the beer
When you found out what he meant, did you say, “That’s gross”?
Interesting that you’re that Australian. I always picture you guys as using more course language.
But I agree that piss is the more coarse version of pee, to the point that I would only use it in the same context where I would use the word asshole . It’s a mild swear.
Usually I say “go the bathroom” or such (shortened to “go” if it’s clear), but “pee” is the go to term when when I need to specify–almost always at home. For example, “I know you’re in the shower, but I need to pee really quick.”
Edit: which reminds me–it’s how I got out of a fight in high school. I told a guy who was asking “you wanna go?” I said, “Do you need help going potty?” I know it should have made him madder, but it through him off and actually made him laugh. We never exactly became friends, but we got along after that.
I have the “I Need To Pee Song,” which I sometimes find myself muttering tunelessly in the middle of the night:
I need to peeee,
I neeeeeeed to peeeeeee
An expression almost no one seems to know is fence beverage, which I picked up from a DXer (radio enthusiast) who would wiz on fence posts during his drives in the country chasing signals.