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.
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.
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.
We call 'em “bio-breaks”.
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 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.”
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.
While we’re at it, how did it fall to me, poster #27, to point out the OP’s title mentions “bowel moments”??
I understand that with the emphasis on time of day, the term “bowel moment” is almost plausible. But I doubt that’s what was really meant.
This comment is just a funny aside, and I’m duly awaiting my pummelling by Gaudere (sp?).