This Day in History: English businessman and plumber, Thomas Crapper, was baptized on this day in 1836. It is tempting to say that he invented the toilet (which he didn't), but he did invent improvements for the toilet. One of these inventions has the unfortunate name of the floating "ballcock", better known to many of us as “that floating thing in the toilet tank that stops the tank from overfilling.”
It has often been claimed in popular culture that the profane slang term for human bodily waste, crap, originated with Thomas Crapper because of his association with lavatories. A common version of this story is that American servicemen stationed in England during World War I saw his name on cisterns and used it as army slang, i.e. "I'm going to the crapper".
There are actually 563 synonyms for the world Toilet, including: bathroom, commode, lavatory, restroom, pot, privy, john, washroom, potty, throne, stool, can, latrine, rest room, lav, loo, receptacle, powder room, water closet, facilities, ladies' room, dunny, facility, jakes, pissoir, washbasin, waste bin, chamber pot, amenity, wc, washstand, earth closet, johnny, pisser, steam room, thunderbox, honey bucket, little boy's room, corporation, dumpster, flowerpot, hammamet, kitty, boudoir, bowl, cludgie, comfort room, cottage, devil's back roads, ditchwater, domus, dubby, fairy glen, hopper, the jacks, khazi, kybo, little house, jerry, oval office, house of ease, little boy's room, reading room, and the bomber to name but a few.
No comments:
Post a Comment