[QUOTE=acsenray]
I don’t think it’s really a matter of squeamishness. I for one am just not interested whether someone wants to use the couch to recover from P.M.S., use the basin to wash one’s hands, face, or mouth or deal with a stain on clothing, use the urinal to urinate, or use the toilet to defecate. There are at least a half a dozen common things one can do in that room; why should one’s colleagues be burdened with this bit of irrelevant knowledge?
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Overseas where all the foreigners live, they just refer to the room with the toilets as “the toilet”. It’s like metonymy or something, it’s not a nefarious plot or anything.
[QUOTE=Cosmic Relief]
Overseas where all the foreigners live, they just refer to the room with the toilets as “the toilet”.
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I don’t think this is a universally true statement. What about terms like “W.C.,” “lavatory,” and “loo”?
Are the public restrooms at Heathrow and Schiphol labeled “toilets”? I don’t seem to recall seeing that term. I know that in Canada and India, the terms “washroom” and “lavatory” are common for public restrooms.
Actually, at formal meetings and conferences, I believe “coffee break” and just plain “break” are more common. If the term “coffee break” is used, nobody understands it to mean that you are being instructed to drink coffee and not do something else.
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Recently during training sessions and meetings the phrase I’ve heard is ‘comfort break’. It seems to be understood generally that this implies a short (5-10 minutes) pause to cover the essentials of life, rather than the queue-for-coffee-bring-it-all-the-way-back-to-the-room allowed for with a longer full coffee break.
This acknowledges the obvious without being TMI, and also implies “don’t dawdle getting snacks or yakking in teh halls, just do whatever’s necessary & get back to the meeting.”
This acknowledges the obvious without being TMI, and also implies “don’t dawdle getting snacks or yakking in teh halls, just do whatever’s necessary & get back to the meeting.”
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This is exactly what I call them; having learned the term from a colleague. I think it fits so well in my “sciency” type circles, that I expect it will eventually become the standard.
I’ve made my prediction…let the Straight Dope Millions spread the word!
It will now and forever be known as a “Bio-Break.”
[QUOTE=acsenray]
I don’t think this is a universally true statement. What about terms like “W.C.,” “lavatory,” and “loo”?
e the public restrooms at Heathrow and Schiphol labeled “toilets”? I don’t seem to recall seeing that term. I know that in Canada and India, the terms “washroom” and “lavatory” are common for public restrooms.
[/QUOTE]
Isn’t the word “toilet” its self originally a euphemism?
I think that it used to be that" doing ones Toilette"(not sure that I spelt that correctly) from the French,was actually going for a wash and freshen up rather then the meaning it holds for us today.