# Prior To Plumbing, What Were The (American English) Euphemisms For Urination/Defecation? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 13, 2022, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904 "2022-07-13T21:30:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2022, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/1 "2022-07-13T21:30:06Z")
Before technology enabled us to say we need to “use the bathroom” or “use the toilet” or “use the facilities” or whatever, what did people say? Particularly if they didn’t use vulgarities like “piss” and “shit.” Would a Proper Lady tell her maid she needs to “defecate”? Would a small child tell her parent she needs to “urinate”? ---
**Author:** ![I.Dunno](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9f8e36/32.png) [@I.Dunno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I.Dunno)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2022, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/2 "2022-07-13T21:36:10Z")
“Ma, I need to use the outhouse.” “Milady, here is the chamberpot you requested.” ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2022, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/3 "2022-07-13T21:40:20Z")
“I need to relieve myself” Also, it may be that words like “piss” and “shit” were considered as vulgar in the past as they are now. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2022, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/4 "2022-07-13T21:45:47Z")
I’ve read “necessary” used for the bathroom, as in “I need to make use of the necessary” ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2022, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/5 "2022-07-13T22:18:14Z")
I’m not sure what the early American terminology would have been, but people have always had a wide variety of euphemisms; they didn’t use the clinical terms in everyday conversation. “Pluck a rose” was sometimes used in Elizabethan England, an era when privies were typically located in the garden. (And “privy” of course is itself a euphemism, originally an adjective meaning “private.”) Even earlier than that (1430s), Margery Kempe describes how her elderly and senile husband reached a point where he “could not do his own easement to go to a sege [chamberpot],” but instead “voided his natural digestion” wherever he happened to be sitting. (This is an era when “shit” and “piss” weren’t even all that vulgar – these are words that get used in court poetry and religious drama – but Margery, an upper-middle-class woman writing a religious text, clearly wanted that extra level of gentility.) ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2022, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/6 "2022-07-13T23:51:23Z")
> To see a man about a dog or horse or duck is an idiom, especially British, of apology for one’s imminent departure or absence, generally to euphemistically conceal one’s true purpose, such as going to use the toilet or going to buy a drink. The phrase dates from [1866](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/See_a_man_about_a_dog), when most people didn’t have private bathrooms, but that may be later than the OP wanted. In America, I’ve read “horse” used, never a dog or duck. “Pay a visit to Mrs. Jones” is also Victorian era. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/7 "2022-07-14T11:47:29Z")
In the records of the Salem witch trials, someone reported that he had been cursed by a witch not to _cacare_ or _micturare_ (not to poop or pee). the Latin words were the ones the court substituted for whatever it was the witness actually said. So I can’t tell you what the 1692 common terms were, but I can give you the 1692 legal euphemism. I strongly suspect the commonly used term for “pee” was simply “piss”. Shakespeare used the word frequently in his plays, for example, and there are plenty of examples right up to the present day. I don’t know about common terms for poop, but I do point out that “excrement” itself is something of a euphemism – Elizabethans sometimes used it to refer to anything coming out of the body, including hair and fingernails. ---
**Author:** ![solost](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/solost/32/11776_2.png) [@solost](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solost)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/8 "2022-07-14T12:00:04Z")
When I’m camping and I need to go out into the woods and dig a hole, I say “got a little business to take care of”. ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/9 "2022-07-14T20:30:15Z")
The Talmud (circa 1600 years ago) refers to an outhouse as a _beit kisay_, which can be translated literally as “chair house”, but I prefer the more vernacular “throne room”. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/10 "2022-07-14T20:57:52Z")
The ancient Greeks had different words for the excrement of humans and animals, but the common word, which survives to this day in some circles, is “_kakka_” ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/11 "2022-07-14T21:01:22Z")
This may be a response more appropriate for Cafe Society than for FQ, but a character in the musical _Oklahoma!_, dazzled by the technology of Kansas City, mentioned that “you can walk to privies in the rain and never wet your feet”, suggesting that privies was used as a euphemism, as mentioned earlier in this thread. ---
**Author:** ![Moriarty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moriarty/32/49_2.png) [@Moriarty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moriarty)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/12 "2022-07-14T21:15:44Z")
This is not entirely on point, but Thomas Jefferson referred to the bathrooms at Monticello as “air closets” (The same cite references bathrooms as “privies”, “necessaries” - noted above - and also as “little houses”) > **[Privies](https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/privies/)** ---
**Author:** ![si\_blakely](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d9b06d/32.png) [@si\_blakely](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/si_blakely)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/13 "2022-07-14T23:19:07Z")
> [@Moriarty](#): > > and also as “little houses” And in some parts of the world we still talk about the “smallest room in the house” or the “little girls/boys room” - the concept hasn’t changed, just the location of the structure. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2022, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/14 "2022-07-15T11:17:40Z")
> [@Keeve](#): > > The Talmud (circa 1600 years ago) refers to an outhouse as a _beit kisay_, which can be translated literally as “chair house”, but I prefer the more vernacular “throne room”. Another common euphemism used in the Middle Ages and Renaissance was _Seige_, which simply means “chair” (as in the _Seige Perilous_ of Arthurian legend). It’s basically the “segge” that **Fretful Porpentine** refers to above. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [July 15, 2022, 11:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/15 "2022-07-15T11:25:22Z")
> [@solost](#): > > When I’m camping and I need to go out into the woods and dig a hole, I say “got a little business to take care of”. I think that is common as I’ve heard it w/o the words ‘a little’. This evolved in my group of backpackers to ‘I have a business meeting’. Some other common hiking ones as separation, I got a call, and to answer a call (of nature). I think the call ones went away with increasing use of cellphones, however using call of nature is still acceptable. ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2022, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/16 "2022-07-16T18:20:31Z")
“Use the pissoir” although that isn’t much of an euphemism. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2022, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/17 "2022-07-16T21:23:27Z")
_A two years’ journal in New York_ has > …Trees and Plants do undoubtedly, tho’ insensibly suck in and digest into their own growth and composition, those subterraneous Particles and Exhalations, which otherwise wou’d be attracted by the heat of the Sun and so become matter for infectious Clouds and malign Atmospheres, and tho we cannot rely upon these causes as permanent and continuing, for the longer and the more any Country is peopled, the more unhealthful it may prove, by reason of Jaques [jakes], Dunghills and other excrementitious stagnations, which offend and annoy the bodies of Men, by incorporating with, and infecting the circumambient Air… ---
**Author:** ![F.U.Shakespeare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/aca169/32.png) [@F.U.Shakespeare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/F.U.Shakespeare)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2022, 9:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/18 "2022-07-17T09:11:22Z")
One of the characters in the 1967 western _Hombre_ refers to “the public convenience”. I don’t know whether that referred to an outhouse, or a latrine. ---
**Author:** ![HeyHomie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/heyhomie/32/207_2.png) [@HeyHomie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HeyHomie)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2022, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/19 "2022-07-17T15:06:23Z")
In a scene in the 2010 “True Grit” remake (which takes place in Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma c. 1880), a teenage girl, a lawman, and Rooster Cogburn (whatever he’s supposed to be) are camping in the wilderness. They wake up in the morning and the girl asks the lawman where Rooster is, and the lawman says he’s “[something something] his morning constitutional,” which I took to mean he was taking his morning dump. ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2022, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904/20 "2022-07-17T15:17:22Z")
“Make water” as a euphemism for urination goes back to Middle English. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/prior-to-plumbing-what-were-the-american-english-euphemisms-for-urination-defecation/967904.md?page=2)