toilet

Sorry, I was in the toilet.

He would hit her when she cried and, if this did not work, would lock her in the toilet for hours on end.

2002, Digby Tantam, Psychotherapy and Counselling in Practice: A Narrative Framework, page 122:

He wet his thumb with saliva pressing on the tongue, ran it up and down faster over the letter 'I' of 'TOILET', the 'LADIES TOILET' was transformed into 'LADIES TO LET' in no time.

2014, C.S. Walter, Abandoned Bridges, pp. 105 f.:

(UK, Australia, Hong Kong) A room, enclosed area or single-purpose building containing a fixture or fixtures used for urination and defecation; a bathroom or water closet.

(New Zealand) A small secondary lavatory having a fixture used for urination and defecation and sink but no bathtub or shower.

My toilet got clogged. Now the bathroom's flooded.

A fixture used for urination and defecation, particularly one with a large bowl and ring-shaped seat which uses water to flush the waste material into a septic tank or sewer system.

Look around you. It's a toilet.

Mr. Gaunt was urbane and smiling again, not a hair out of place. "Do you like this little town? Do you love it? […]" / […] "I hate this fucking toilet," he said to Leland Gaunt.

(figuratively) A very shabby or dirty place.

(obsolete) A covering of linen, silk, or tapestry, spread over a dressing table in a chamber or dressing room.

And now, unveil’d, the toilet stands display’d, / Each silver vase in mystic order laid.

1714, Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock, Canto I, lines 121-126:

(obsolete) The table covered by such a cloth; a dressing table.

Against that short evening her toilet was consulted the whole day […].

1791, Elizabeth Inchbald, A Simple Story, Oxford, published 2009, page 118:

Come as you are, tarry not over your toilet.

1913, Rabindranath Tagore, Come as you are..., Poetry Foundation, page 85:

Three women got down and standing on the curb they made unabashed toilets, smoothing skirts and stockings, brushing one another's back, opening parcels and donning various finery.

1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Vintage, published 1993, page 111:

Here, at night, a lonely but brilliantly neon-illuminated figure, I performed my toilet, watched incuriously by the Burmese seated at the tables of the tea-shops below.

1952, Norman Lewis, Golden Earth, Chapter 8:

(now historical or archaic) Personal grooming; the process of washing, dressing and arranging the hair.

It is so painful in you, Celia, that you will look at human beings as if they were merely animals with a toilette, and never see the great soul in a man's face.

1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter I, in Middlemarch […], volume I, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book I, page 25:

"It is a quarter-past two," he said. "Your telegram was dispatched about one. But no one can glance at your toilet and attire without seeing that your disturbance dates from the moment of your waking."

1917, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge:

(now rare, archaic) One's style of dressing: dress, outfit.

Tok Pisin: toilet

→ Japanese: トイレット, トイレ

ашьашьма

room used for urination and defecation — see also bathroom, men's room, ladies' room, outhouse, portable toilet, latrine, shitter

toilet

fixture used for urination and defecation — see also flush toilet, squat toilet, chemical toilet, urinal, latrine

From Middle French toilette, diminutive of toile (“cloth”), from their use to protect clothing while shaving or arranging hair. From its use as a private room, toilet came to refer euphemistically to lavatories and then to its fixtures, beginning in the United States in the late 19th century.

Appendix:Roget MICRA thesaurus/Class II § 191. Receptacle


toilet

We use imitation. We take a doll, a doll that can wet, and make sure it has pants on it. We use the principle that a very effective way of learning is by teaching. Se we have him teach the doll how to toilet properly.

1974, Philip J. Hilts, Behavior Mod, Harper's Magazine Press, page 74:

In many developing regions, toileting at night is especially dangerous for children. Without electrical power for lighting, kids may fall into the deep pits of the latrines through broken or unsteady floorboards. Girls are sometimes assaulted by men who hide in the dark.

2024 February 17 (last accessed), Jenny Morber, “Scientists turn pee into power in Uganda”, in Upworthy Science:

To use (urinate or defecate in) a toilet.

To assist another (a child, etc.) in using a toilet.

en-verb

toilet (third-person singular simple present toilets, present participle toileting or toiletting, simple past and past participle toileted or toiletted)

toilets (present singular third-person)
toileting (participle present)
toiletting (participle present)
toileted (participle past)
toileted (past)
toiletted (participle past)
toiletted (past)