English - The Real Deal

前几天有朋友提到了英式英语的问题。由于从来没在英国生活过，所以我只能说声抱歉，这里的重点将会继续放在美式英语上。不过偶尔介绍一下（我知道的）British English是绝对没有问题的。

今天先介绍loo吧。Loo就是“厕所”，大家天天都要出入的地方。这里的第一篇帖子就是关于上厕所的，后来又提到过通厕所，今天又是讲厕所。 放心，我不是有厕所癖，而是受到了Jason Kottke的启发。之前，我只知道英国人说loo，从来没想过为什么。Why do they call it the loo?让我大开眼界。

到底为什么英国人叫厕所loo呢？The Straight Dope有个很好的总结：

(1) It’s short for “Waterloo,” which in turn is slang for “water closet.”

(2) It’s short for “gardy-loo,” a warning shouted by natives of Edinburgh in the days when it was still customary to empty your slops out the window.

(3) It’s short for “Lady Louisa,” Louisa being the unpopular wife of a 19th-century earl of Lichfield. In 1867 while the couple was visiting friends, two young wiseacres took the namecard off her bedroom door and stuck it on the door of the bathroom. The other guests thereafter began jocularly speaking of “going to Lady Louisa.” In shortened form this eventually spread to the masses.

(4) It comes from the French lieu, “place,” meaning, of course, that place. Some 17th century English architectural plans call the bathroom “le lieu.” Similarly, Germans sometimes call it der Locus.

(5) It comes from the Continental practice of referring to the bathroom as “Room 100″–”100,” when written hastily, looks like “loo.”

好像都很有道理，不过我最喜欢的是第五个解释。让我有立刻去欧洲亲眼见证一下的冲动。^_^

顺便提一下，美国人一般都懂loo，但很少用。公共厕所大多叫restroom，私人厕所大多叫bathroom。Toilet也常用，但它不仅仅指厕所，还指马桶（john也是如此，属于俚语）。Lavatory在飞机、火车上用得比较多，其他地方就比较少（纯属个人感觉）。

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Culture, Slang, Everyday Life, British English. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.