Re: rest room - a lavatory or something else?

Speaking of euphemisms, science fiction author Ursula Le Guin expressed
her exasperation with this sort of thing by inventing the word
"shitstool" for "toilet" in "The Dispossessed." All other English terms
are euphemisms. The British "water closet" is a particularly cute one
which has spread around the world. You will see toilets labeled "WC" in
all sorts of non-English-speaking places, even in facilities where the
only water is supplied by the users of the facilities.

My father used to sell plumbing, and I witnessed the embarrassment of
my Spanish teacher when she came into the hardware store and asked to
see a "lavatory" and he took her to the sinks. She wanted a toilet. In
my youth, school bathrooms were always called "lavatories."

Wonder where "loo" came from? The OED isn't much help:

[Etym. obscure.]

A privy, a lavatory. Also attrib. and Comb.
A. S. C. Ross's examination of possible sources in Blackw. Mag.
(1974) Oct. 309-16 is inconclusive: he favours derivation, in some
manner that cannot be demonstrated, from Waterloo.

Sounds like a variation on the sort of pattern you get in Cockney
rhyming slang--water closet becomes Waterloo becomes loo?

> The general problem is that all varieties of English
> prefer euphemisms.

.

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