When I worked at the university, one day a visiting professor came by my room and asked, ’Is there a restroom somewhere here?’ I knew there was a small room where staff could lie down if taken ill or just to relax, so I told him that there was a restroom at the end of the corridor.
I was surprised when he looked into my office after only a couple of minutes and said, ’Thank you!’ ’Didn’t you find the restroom?’, I asked. ’Oh, yes’, he said and disappeared.
’That was a short rest’, I reflected, and it wasn’t until later that I realised what a restroom is in American English.
There are many euphemisms for the word toilet in English, which I mention in my book It’s not the farts that kill–it’s the smell!, available at Amazon. Among them are bathroom, gents’, ladies’, washroom, lavatory, john, privy, powder room, etc.
Phrases are also used as euphemisms for going to the toilet. A guest in a British home might be told, ’I’ll show you where you can wash your hands’ and may think that the host thinks that he is dirty.
A British friend of mine told me that she had said, ’I think I need to powder my nose’ when visiting a family in Sweden (another way of implying that you are heading for the smallest room in the house), and her hostess had taken a close look at her and then said, ’No, you don’t. It’s perfectly fine.’
To return to the restroom, there is a story about an American who was picking up his Swedish friend at an airport. When they got into the car, the American said, ’Perhaps you need to got to the restroom?’, and without hesitating, the Swede answered, ’No, I can do that in the car.’
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