Date: Wed, 27 Mar 1996 05:27:46 -0800 From: SETH SKLAREY 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 >, but his wife (from NYC), for whom this is a , >has (hissy?) fits when he calls it a lavatory. I think I originally learned > 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) > >