Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A card game in which each player contributes stakes to a pool.
- n. Chiefly British A toilet.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A dialectal (Scotch) form of love.
- n. A game of cards. It is played by any number of persons up to seventeen with a full pack, the cards ranking as in whist. Each player deposits a certain number of chips (generally three), called a loo, in the pool, and after looking at his hand of three cards can either withdraw or declare—that is, play the hand through. The players who win the tricks divide the pool according to the number of tricks taken by each; any player declaring and failing to take a trick is looed, and must deposit three chips in the pool. Often called
division loo . - n. The deposit, generally of three chips, which the players make in the pool in the game of loo.
- To beat in the game of loo, as a player that has declared.
- Same as halloo.
Wiktionary
- n. colloquial, Australia, New Zealand, UK A toilet.
- n. A card game
- v. transitive To beat in the game of loo by winning every trick.
- n. A hot, dusty wind in Bihar and the Punjab.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. An old game played with five, or three, cards dealt to each player from a full pack. When five cards are used the highest card is the knave of clubs or (if so agreed upon) the knave of trumps; -- formerly called
lanterloo . - n. A modification of the game of “all fours” in which the players replenish their hands after each round by drawing each a card from the pack.
- v. To beat in the game of loo by winning every trick.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a toilet in Britain
Etymologies
- From Chinese (Wiktionary)
- Short for obsolete lanterloo, from French lanturlu, a meaningless refrain, loo.Origin unknown. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I just shook my head and headed down to what she called the loo.”
“Not every one who uses a disabled loo is in a wheel chair, some people might want to use it for other reasons (a diabetic traffic officer who is perfectly safe if they mange their condition with insulin springs to mind).”
“Everything else has long since changed; the cards pulped (or worse), but at least the loo is still there.”
“So I ring up my doctor and make an appointment and decide, considering time away from the loo is not an option, to lash down on the bike.”
“The number 100 is not dissimilar in appearance to the word loo, and there were plenty of servicemen from the U.S.A. and England in Italy from 1943 onwards.”
“The etymology of the word loo is perhaps the greatest mystery of all in this field of vocabulary.”
“The bourdalou, after all, was a thing, not a place, used when the place in question -- the "loo" -- was inaccessible; used, indeed, in lieu of same.”
“I don’t know why no-one has thought of this before: people who don’t need to use a toilet lining up in front of a mock loo is the obvious way to tackle a global sanitation crisis.”
The World Council of Churches: a new kind of potty « Anglican Samizdat
“The loo is out of the question for me as I’m usually in and out rather swiftly, but the train is probably second-best as I’m quite often in either work or homework mode.”
“Northerly hot winds called loo blow across the south during the day in the summer, causing dust storms with wind velocities between 60 and 110 miles per hour (mph).”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘loo’.
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wind names
yet another list like this.
abroholos, alizé, amihan, habagat, barguzin wind, bayamo, bergwind, bise, bora, brickfielder, brisa, brisote and 93 more...
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UK Usage - Find US Equivalent
All these terms have a (different) American English equivalent. Wonder if you can identify them?
abridgement (abri..., accoutrement, accoutre, acknowledgement (..., opposite, advert, adaptor, adapter, sticking plaster, advertise, adviser (advisor ..., adze, aesthete and 1196 more...
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Change one letter
Change one letter in the title of an existing book, and create an entirely new literary work. Add a one-sentence comment, describing the new work.
all the pretty ho..., the brothels kara..., caesar's garlic wars, the unbearable ti..., a heartbreaking w..., the good marrow, the right stiff, lady windermere's..., infinite pest, the cremains of t..., eyes on the pride, the spoils of boy... and 747 more...
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3-letter Scrabble Words
aah, aal, aas, aba, abo, abs, aby, ace, act, add, ado, ads and 995 more...
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Words that can be spelled on an upsid...
Imagine my joy when I was wearing my calculator watch and was first introduced to someone named Leslie - there was exactly enough room on the display for 317537.14.
Edit: I've discove...hi, hello, leslie, sheesh, she, bells, hells, hog, boss, goggles, he, bob and 233 more...
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British English that's not in America...
British English that's not in American English
dummy, ta, answerphone, first fifteen soccer, first eleven cricket, shirty, fag, Black Monday, filter coffee, woolyback, motoring, loo and 20 more...
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Keyboard Hopscotch
You may start on any key. You may repeat a character, or travel to an adjacent key on the keyboard. On my qwerty keyboard, I may follow s with w, e, d, x, z, a, or (repeating) s. (If you use az...
assert, weeds, trews, treed, sewer, sewed, seeds, sawer, sawed, reeds, erred, asses and 65 more...
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Unusual words for Words With Friends
A list of words that WWF recognizes as valid - most are unusual words; some are simply high-scoring.
botel, slipe, jeu, chub, chubs, cote, mure, tittle, dev, loo, hoke, helo and 357 more...
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3LW
3 letter words, not the girl band.
boggle and speed scrabble would not be half as fun without them.aah, boa, dot, fun, ick, log, oca, pyx, sos, was, aal, bob and 342 more...
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Bird Wirds: Sundry Nicknames
A list of birders' "shorthand" names, traditional nicknames, non-English names, and obsolete names for feathered creatures worldwide.
Interesting blog entry here on naming U.S. birds.welsh ambassador, goatsucker, french magpie, timberdoodle, butterbutt, popinjay, logcock, old cranky, long john, sprog, butterbum, wedgie and 697 more...
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"K-M" words
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English
rewarding, wit, landmark, core, soar, drop, plunge, plummet, dive, level off, rocket, peak and 110 more...
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Professional Scrabble Lexicon (TWL)
A myriad of game-changing words every Scrabble addict must have in his arsenal.
Keep in mind that these are all tried-and-true feasibly playable words selected for their handiness, i.e...paragon, pignora, ganef, suttee, origan, ohia, aioli, abasement, lehr, mho, tallow, harelike and 843 more...
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anotherfailedattempt's Words
kakistocracy, conflagration, pollyanna, equanimity, punctillious, obstreperous, ribald, belligerent, truculent, verbose, lachrymose, onanism and 278 more...
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The Motherland! (God Bless the Queen)
Words that remind me of England, which I miss very much.
snog, nappy, wanker, telly, knickers, crumpet, pants, bum, loo, bollocks, stroppy, whinge and 108 more...
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persnickety parlance
behoove, ebullient, insouciant, insipient, froth, quandary, quixotic, tendril, maktub, furrow, furl, anastrophe and 1076 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for loo.
leaden Wait a minute, you might be on to something there: The game is also known as lant, which also means “stale urine”. If it’s not related, it’s at least iroquoisy. Oct 9, 2011
leaden Back from planet [Ambigram, with his letters neatly scrambled and his digits freshly rotated and lowercased]
I think that etymology applies to the card game division loo, which (I assume) has a distinct ancestry.
Suddenly [relieved] (Oh, that’s to what bilby was alluding.) Oct 9, 2011
ruzuzu Wait, doesn't the etymology hint at lanterloo ("from French lanturlu")? Oct 9, 2011
Poeticjazztice "I'm a father of two
And read in the loo"
Just joined the site and looving it! The little ditty above is an excerpt from my profile. I'm indebted to the poster of "loo" here for the inspiration. Sep 21, 2011
milosrdenstvi Head is Navy usage. Sep 20, 2011
hernesheir You lot are definitely speaking from way beyond Through the Loo King Glass. This thread is getting going gone Hatter and Hatter.
Sep 17, 2011
sionnach Gosh. So many unexamined assumptions in rolig's last post. Apparently in his world entertaining people on the bedroom floor is out of the question. Which seems limiting, to say the least. Sep 17, 2011
Dan337 Slowly backing away Golly, bilby, that sounds . . . swell . . . , but I gotta go . . . uh . . . manicure my . . . um . . . thesauri . . . now. On a different website! Planet! Yeah. OK, gotta go, bye! Flees Sep 17, 2011
bilby Quite. I'm single and share an apartment with a pilot and used car salesman and I'm not about to ____ etc.
I'd much rather play at hidesous with Foxy and Dan. Sep 16, 2011
yarb Dan: I wonder if French "lieu" is related to Spanish "lugar", place. Seems reasonable. If so, it's great that "loo" is related to the Spanish - and presumably the Latin - for "place". Sep 16, 2011
yarb You Aussies must be terrible prudes if you won't take a shower while your missus lays a cable. I'm surprised. Sep 16, 2011
Dan337 The etymology here appears to refer to division loo (although this wouldn’t be bad terminology for the quite practical arrangement bilby described). I assumed the (currently) more common “loo” was anglicized from l’eau, as in the splendidly historical word gardyloo* (garde à l’eau), but the Online Etymology Dictionary† suggests it’s “probably from Fr. lieux d’aisances, ‘lavatory,’ lit. ‘place of ease’.”
* I am compelled to mention this word, as it was one of many that doomed me to a life of logophilia.
† The other (less reliable) OED Sep 16, 2011
Dan337 (Damn your typo, sionnach—I thought “hidesous” might be an actual word, presumably involving hidden old French copper nickels. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I must visit the lavoratory.) Sep 16, 2011
bilby Isn't the point of living in Paris to acclimatise oneself to people speaking French with hideous accents?
"Very few houses have a room with a bath but no toilet in it these days." We might be getting closer to the nub here as I'd say it's standard in Australia in most houses. Back in the day the dunny would have been an outbuilding behind the house, while the bathroom was a room inside the house proper. Ever since we allowed the compost flusher inside the manor it's generally in a separate room. After all, having a shower AND taking a dump are not done concurrently hence the access to facilities is somewhat enhanced as two members of the household may be using them in privacy at the same time. Sep 16, 2011
sionnach My current primitive apartment here in Paris has a bathroom with a bath, but without a toilet in it. I would take a photo, but I'd feel obliged to clean the tub first, and there is an NCIS marathon on Canal 6 and I have to see if Ziva gets away from the bad guys, all of whom are speaking French with hidesous accents
Sep 16, 2011
ruzuzu I've only ever seen one house with a bathtub in a room with no toilet--but I would have never thought to call that room "the bathroom." For me (smack dab in the middle of North America) a room with a bathtub in it would be called something like "that room with the bathtub in it." Sep 16, 2011
yarb If someone said they were having their bathroom - or their loo - renovated, then I would indeed assume that the crapper was being ripped from its moorings. Very few houses have a room with a bath but no toilet in it these days, so the sense of "bathroom" as distinct from "loo" is obsolete.
Rolig, there is actually a transatlantic distinction re: "go to the bathroom". The sense of "urinate and/or defecate" is pretty much confined to North America, I think. In the UK one would say "the dog crapped in / shat in the kitchen", or in more polite language, "fouled" or "soiled" the kitchen. So I think in this case the Americans take the periphrasis a step further than the Brits do, as they do also by using the ridiculous term "restroom".
I've never heard it called "the head". Surely there is a list somewhere? Sep 16, 2011
rolig In American (and I suppose British, too?) English the idiom "go to the bathroom" doesn't mean go to a certain room, it means "to urinate and/or defecate". Which is why the sentence: "The dog went to the bathroom in the kitchen" makes sense. So the original example is misleading. Also problematic for Americans is that a room with just a toilet can certainly be called a bathroom, but it is just as likely to be called other things as well, ranging from "the head" and "the john" to "the powder room" -- terms that, I think, would never be used for a room that had a bathtub but no toilet. Unlike in Europe, where having a separate room just for the toilet (with or without a sink) is not unusual in homes, especially older ones, in the standard American home the toilet and the bathtub are usually in the same room, though there may also be another room with just a toilet and a sink ("the powder room"), which is there for convenience (e.g. it will be on the floor where one does one's entertaining, or in the basement; it will probably not be on the floor with the bedrooms). Sep 16, 2011
bilby You've lost me completely.
Of course a room with no toilet would be called a bathroom. If it had a bath. If it didn't have a bath it would just be a room.
If a person says "I'm going to the bathroom" I would assume toilet, but only because of the footsie you refer to. It's very obtuse. A person says bathroom, means toilet, means loo, therefore loo is a substitute for bathroom? Only works in a limited number of of contexts. "I'm having the bathroom renovated." Would you assume the crapper being ripped out or new tiles in the shower recess, etc? Me the latter. You can't win an argument simply by putting ergo in it, though it's a nice touch.
Sep 16, 2011
yarb My money is on the W.C.
But equally, would one call a room with no toilet a "bathroom"? In your scenario, were "loo" to be replaced with "bathroom", I bet most people would still infer that the person was going to the room with the W.C. Ergo, "bathroom" is a synonym of "loo".
The way the English language tiptoes around this subject is pretty pathetic. We require a polite, specific word for the thing itself (crapper or bog, perhaps) and also for the room (dunny, shithouse?) - words which aren't euphemisms. I'm fed up with restrooms and lavatories and washrooms and privies. Sep 15, 2011
bilby It's odd that the tweets pull up 2 different Indonesian usages.
“Makan tai aja loo~”
@olinecrodd
"You can just go eat shit."
- loo is standing in for lu, which is borrowed from a Chinese dialect and is used in Jakarta slang to mean 'you'.
“Jangan di tambah lagi la infusnyaa hari ini akuu uda di kasi pulang loo :((((”
@aditarahmadani
"(They) didn't put the drip in again today so I was allowed to return home."
- loo appears to be a hip spelling of lho, which is a particle used simply for emphasis.
Sep 15, 2011
bilby My point is this. Let's say we have an arrangement where there is a water closet in one room and next to it a separate bathroom with tub and hand basin. If a person then says, "I'm going to the loo" (not in or on, as that would be giving it away), which room is your money fancying? Sep 15, 2011
yarb Bilby, in my experience "loo" can refer to both the bathroom and the toilet. One can be on the loo or in the loo. Sep 15, 2011
rolig Like the first CD definition here. A Scot might say he's looking for loo, but don't believe him. He's just cottaging. Sep 15, 2011
bilby No, it's a British form of toilet. Sep 15, 2011
MIRIAMKELLYDUNCAN it's also the british form of bathroom Sep 15, 2011
reesetee Newfoundland nickname for the Common Loon. Jan 12, 2009
john Love the first WeirdNet definition. As if there is a single pissoir somewhere in Britian--Waterloo Station, probably--which has been affectionately dubbed "Loo." Sep 9, 2008
anotherfailedattempt I just a read a story in the paper the other day saying this woman built a luxury loo in London exclusively for women. Just to get in you have to pay 5 pounds. Seems so ridiculous. Jan 14, 2007