- By Jim Evans
- Entertainment
Print 
Smart Talk SMART TALK By Dr. Verbos Metikulos
RESTROOM: Euphemisms can be hilarious as well as embarrassingly revelatory of their users’ inhibitions. A hundred years ago, an interesting condition meant pregnant. But saying or printing toilet apparently still upsets many. But do you really rush to a restroom for a rest? Do you go the bathroom to take a bath? Well, sometimes. But if it’s a bathroom, it had better have at least a shower in it.
Every shopping mall should have real restrooms, carpeted lounges with soft seats and no noise. But I digress.
About once a year, I attend a language conference in Europe for the Institute for the Linguistically Impaired. What a relief it is — literally — to see signs saying toilet, or a word much like that, in a strange city at a critical moment. Often, the sign hangs right over the street, with an arrow. Now that’s what I call civilization.
These remarks remind me of incontinent ordnance, which is Newspeak from the military for shelling our own troops by mistake.
----
v2i32