Also earth closet.
In some places in England (and elsewhere perhaps) houses were built without toilets. Later a toilet was built in the yard.
Which article is this in reference to? Can you post the URL? There are so many columns about toilets, it helps us to comment better if we’re all on the same page.
It’s “pick-and-choose” Monday again …
We have the excellent article by our good friend Dex “Why is it called a restroom, anyway?” (June 2nd, 2009) that provides extensive detail to The Master’s original article “Why do we call it the “bathroom,” even when it has no tub?” (March 3rd, 1985) …
Supplementing The Master’s comments about the Crapper … I happen to be the proud owner an official “John Crapper” toilet … says so right on the top of the bowl up where the shit seat is bolted down … alas alas, it’s a Standard American remake of likely 1950’s manufacture …
“Some places in England”? What do they teach kids these days? That used to be the way that it was done in all places in all countries, until a scant few centuries ago.
Two from my childhood in Maine:
basement In every school I ever attended.
wayside At summer camp. (Always referring, in my experience, to a permanent building with cold-water plumbing.)
The “Restroom” adjective puzzled me when I was a kid. I pictured a lounge, with overstuffed easy chairs. Wasn’t sure why it was necessary to take a break from the apparently brutal restaurant atmosphere, but was impressed with their accomodating nature.
“Comfort room” was still in common use in the Philippines when we were living there ten years ago.
Another one not on Dex’s list, house of ease, as from the easing of the bowels. Swift uses the expression in his 1734 poem A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed. BTW this and his The Lady’s Dressing Room are still essential reading for young men embarking on their first romance who may have a rather too idealized view of the objects of their affection. Although there is a very real danger that the poems might cause them to take up monasticism!
Some science fiction books have used the term “the refresher”, or simply " 'fresher". I think that was the word used in Asimov’s The Caves of Steel, for instance.
Ah, the “wayside.”
U. S. Dopers of a certain age will recall the legendary “W. C.” joke that prompted Jack Paar to storm off the set of the Tonight Show in 1960.
This UK Doper remembers the hooha as well. Although we didn’t get the show the story was in all the papers.
So was the wayside euphemism in reference to Paar’s joke or independent of it?
No, no, “hooha” is a euphemism for something else.