CHAT When is a bath not a bath? (Re: Hymn to IKEA etc)

On Friday, February 27, 2004, at 12:33 AM, Joseph Fatula wrote:
[snip]
> You'd be hard pressed to find a "lavatory" around here, though about half
> the people in this city would understand that "lava" means "wash"...
Actually you be fairly hard pressed over this side of the Pond also. Half
a century or more ago (when I was a youngster), in private homes and
public buildings we had little rooms called "lavatories" and there were
dedicated buildings for public use called "conveniences" (tho the term we
schoolboys used for both was simply 'bog' or sometimes the mock Latin
'bogitorium' [with hard g, and the plural being, of course, 'bogitoria']).

Now in Britain they've all been transmogrified into "toilets" (which 50
years back had only reached 'articles used in dressing, mode or process of
dressing' in its gradual passage from 'small cloth' [<-- french 'toile <--
Latin 'te:la' = 'web'] to the modern meaning of 'place usd for urination
and defecation' - what a semantic journey!)

>                                                          ...  But to
> answer your question, a public bathroom would be either "vacant" or "in
> use", depending on its contents.
Er, like if someone was actually taking a bath or not?   ;)

Ray
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