Underwear

I have just been doing a bit of googling and confirmed my own suspicions that there is not a single word in the English language for the room we go into to void our human waste that is not a euphemism.

bathroom, washroom, latrine, loo, water closet, cloakroom, bog, comfort station, john, convenience, commode, heads, privy, garderobe, powder room, ladies, wc, lav, netty.

I have just found one: urinal, but that is specific to one form of waste not the more general.

Not sure what happens in other languages.

Hate the words knickers,panties,loo, lav, wc I like the words bathroom,toilet,underwear,pants

My grandmother called my brothers’ shorts ‘knickers’ and called our long school socks ‘stockings’ to our absolute disgust.

He’s Irish..

MrJ calls his boxers cacks. We say toilet or loo.

Mam said she was off to the netty. Toilet in north east of the uk.

i have always said knickers, it used to be high waisted always black, now due to having to wear pull up pants all the time i buy the ladies boxer type knickers from temu, they are made from 90% Nylon, 10% Elastane, so they are stretchy and comfortable and cover all the pull ups. i have always said loo and boobs.

My neighbour told of the whole family sitting down ready for Sunday dinner.
Her dad asked where Peter was, and some bright spark said "He's on the bog!"

She said there was a deafening silence, and her dad asked bright spark to repeat what they'd just said.

When they did, Dad dragged them away from the table, and chased them upstairs, ranting about "profanity" at the dinner table!

My mother always said lavatory so when I was a stroppy teen I said toilet just to wind her up. Now it's the loo.
I wear knickers my sons wear boxers. Small children wear pants.

That made me laugh!

If she had visited my house, she'd have used the toilet, the same as everyone else

The queen always said lavatory which is the correct name

Notagranny44

I think that the men's knee-length trousers that are worn now for shooting and for casual wear by men before the war are usually called "plus-Fours" in the UK. Knickers is an Americanism I think. The "plus-four" refers to the addition of four inches of length added to the measurement of the waist to knee when the are being made, so you can bend your knee easily when wearing them.
You can also have "plus-sixes" and "plus-eights" giving a baggier look. My Dad had a pair in his youth.

Knickerbocker Glories😃

At school, and I think that Boadicea and I went to the same boarding school (apologies if I’m wrong) the loo was always called “the ever” because we were “forever going”. The nightly call by matron was
“ if anyone wants to go to the ever, go now because it’s lights out”
Forever etched into my brain!

Agreed Nancat

I always understood Napkin to be cloth and serviette to be paper, Grantanow.
We have napkins at home.
I didn't realise a serviette could be cloth - though it would potentially be fabric in France where I think it's a "serviette de table".

Bra & knickers for me. Never worn a petticoat in my life.

NanKate

I remember people saying ‘the Lav’ which I thought sounded awful.

The lavvie was a favourite too for men.

My view:

Lingerie = underwear and covers all undergarments (although if you look at our female pop stars these days they are anything BUT under)
Knickers are smaller frillier versions of pants, except for small children, where pants will do as simpler
Trousers are only pants in North American continent

Bathroom is often now more accurate because the bath is often in the same room as a toilet, but my mum would "spend a penny" and my dad would refer to "the little boys room" <lol> Toilet being a derivation of the French "toilette" which I believe covered washing too. Lavatory is also French as a place to wash. We have WC on some public spaces (water closet), but being lazy it has always been loo for me

When young always used "going to the bathroom" for the toilet as that was in the bathroom. I was often reminded the toilet is the lavatory! Now it's the toilet or loo or even bog. Some places have for quite a while had washroom on doors instead of toilets. Nowadays I don't care what tgey are called as long as clean, with toilet paper and hand washing/drying facilties.

I like undercrackers. 🤭

Knickers!
(My OH pointed out that for some reason I always refer to them as "me knickers" rather than "my Knickers"! I hadn't noticed that I did that!)
My dad used to refer to what we call the loo as "the little boys' room" - which in their home was the one with the shower in it as opposed to the one with the bath in it which my mother used.
Our "special" euphemism is "going for a sudoku" from when we always had a book (now a tablet or phone) to while away the time as I often get constipated.
..and bras - at school we called them "over-shoulder-boulder-holders". (Not that I had any boulders, just pebbles!)

My granny always said she was going to visit "Mrs Jones". I occasionally wear a petticoat. A chemise is a blouse ( French). And I also wear pants under my trousers. They are sometimes called undercrackers in Yorkshire.

Romola, I love the German word for bra . A lot of their language is very funny to me .

Well, I have said it before, but will say it again.

Neither toilet nor bathroom are Americanisms. In the part of Scotland I grew up in both words were in common use. Lavatory was frowned upon as being vulgar, and loo regarded as a ridiculous word that only a Londoner would use!

Apparently, in many parts of England, toilet was considered ruder than lavatory.

Canadians are still shocked by the use of the word toilet.

Both toilet and lavatory are euphemisms - a lavatory was originally a place in a monastery where the monks or nuns washed themselves Lavatorium in Latin - the latrine or privy was designated Neccesarium - the necessary place.

For some reason humans have always tended to be coy about giving the place they resort to to relieve their bladders or bowels too descriptive a name.

In my childhood the department in a large shop that sold Ladies' underwear was designated by the French word Lingerie, which no-one I met as a child knew how to pronounce or whether to do so in French or attempt an English sounding word. I remember wondering what ladies' underwear had to do with the word "lingering". Nothing of course.

Pants definately meant underpants, although you could state the obvious by saying underpants. Knickers was a word my parents deemed vulgar, briefs was all right when referring to adults underpants. And underwear referred to any garment that you wore under the clothes that everyone could see you had on: pants, underskirts, slips, bras, libery bodices, corsets etc.