Use of the term "bathroom" rather than restroom/women'/men's room (quote)
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I was brought up that it was crude and actually inaccurate to call a public restroom a "bathroom" as there are no bathing facilities in the typical restroom.
Now I even hear newspeople talk about public "bathrooms". Why the change? To me it sounds crude and substandard - like something a kid or uneducated person might say.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marie Joseph
. . .
I come from a working class background where nobody had higher education but was taught to call it the "facilities" or "rest room". . . . The only place it was acceptable to use words like "bathroom', 'toilet', and so on was at home with immediate family. We were much more informal among ourselves . . . .
Marie Joseph came close with that answer. Across the US, and probably Canada as well, it was considered crude and informal to use "bathroom" instead of "restroom" outside the immediate family. There were pockets of regional dialect that used "commode" and "toilet", but in public, it was polite to use "restroom". However, over the past few decades, there has been a distinct trend in language to allow informalities in speech in all situations. When I was a child, one would never have heard s**k, or f**k, or sh*t, unless you were with a bunch of drunk male buddies. And even then it was pretty outrageous. Today they are commonplace, even being heard on broadcast radio and TV. Using "bathroom" instead of "restroom" was only a minor passenger on that train of linguistic change.
I still use "restroom" in public, mostly, as it feels more comfortable to me. Others will do what they will.
OP, it beats the terms used in some parts of Europe: toilet. Though "WC" is a nice alternative.
Count your blessings. Things could always be worse.
You’ll hear some weird and wonderful names over here, but rarely bathroom or WC, and NEVER rest room, or comfort station.
Women will often, in a bar or restaurant, ask for “the loo”, and in someone’s house too, or they’ll say toilet.
Men, particularly in London, will ask for the carsey, khazi, or kazi, which is assumed to be a derivation of the Italian word, casa, meaning house.
As a frequent visitor to your shores, I will often say that I’m going to the can, but I do this strictly to wind my wife up.
If this is supposed to be about writing, I would say the term you use is all about the kind of writing.
If it's a news story, you quote the person, using the term they have used, or whatever is most commonly recognized by your audience.
If it's fiction, you use the term your character would use, even if it is too crass, coy, indirect, or euphemistic for your personal taste. You could end up using restroom, bathroom, toilet, head, loo, and ****er all in the same story. All would be correct, as long as they are true to the speech patterns of your characters.
I was brought up that it was crude and actually inaccurate to call a public restroom a "bathroom" as there are no bathing facilities in the typical restroom.
Now I even hear newspeople talk about public "bathrooms". Why the change? To me it sounds crude and substandard - like something a kid or uneducated person might say.
I've gotten used to it now, but we were raised to always use the term "restroom" for a public facility.
If I have to ask in a public place, I say "ladies room" which is kind of meaningless but still mostly works. However, at work, we have shared (single person) facilities in my area so even that's not a failsafe.
But I think that regardless of the lack of a bathtub, bathroom has become acceptable usage. However, while it may not be completely accurate, I fail to grasp why on earth it would be "crude" to call it that. Sure, saying the crapper or something like that is crude, but what is crude about a bath?
When my husband was going to grad school we entertained his supervising professor, his wife and toddler for an evening meal one night. The little boy was startlingly advanced for a child of his age.
When he had to go to the bathroom during the meal he said, "Mommy, I have to urinate." I nearly gagged. After they left I asked DH if he supposed the child said, "I have to defecate" when he had to do that.
Sometimes a euphemism is our friend.
I can totally see that for the children of a Professor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrolman
At home, it was "bathroom".
At parochial school, it was "lavatory".
In the military (army), it was "latrine".
At the police station, it was "the sh***er".
Now that I'm retired, I prefer to refer to it as "the twah-let".
I knew that the Army called it the Latrine and the Navy (or any boat) refers to it as the Head, but I always thought that in common parlance, Latrine was an older word (along the lines of Lavatory) for an unplumbed facility like an outhouse or a porta-potty.
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I like that.
