Date:  Wed, 27 Mar 1996 05:27:46 -0800

From:  SETH SKLAREY <crissiet[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]IX.NETCOM.COM>

Subject: Re: Lavatory = ?



As a kid in NJ 1944-1953 I could never get straight the difference between

lavatory and laboratory, so I always called it a sink. The only people I

ever heard use the term lavatory were teachers, and they usualy used it as a

euphemism for bathroom. If you think of a laboratory as a place where

(work)labor is performed and lavatory for washing

it is easier for a kid to comprehend. I just figured it out, I think.



Seth Sklarey

Wittgenstein School of the Unwritten Word

Coconut grove, FL

crissiet[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ix.netcom.com







>Ignore this if it has come up before, but one of my colleagues, from N.

>Alabama, notes that the bathroom fixture he washed his hands in was a

><lavatory>, but his wife (from NYC), for whom this is a <wash basin>,

>has (hissy?) fits when he calls it a lavatory. I think I originally learned

><lavatory> as fancy euphemism for "bathroom", but my recollections are too

>dim to be sure, though I do recall some confusion over what the term exactly

>denoted. Does DARE find a regional difference here, or a chronological one?

>    Rudy

>

>    --Rudy Troike (rtroike[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]ccit.arizona.edu)

>

>