Why do we say 'on a bus' but 'in a car'?

re saab:
In general, Yanks would probably say you sit on the toilet, not in it. " toilet" is usually used for the fixture, not the room (it can be used for the room, too, but it's probably more likely to be called the bathroom, the restroom, the men's room or the women's room)/

Hopefully you don´t sit in a toilet. Especially the oldfashioned outhouse one.
Logically you would say on just as with a chair -nothing on the sides.
You are in the bathroom, in the bathtub but on the toilet.

English and Scandinavians say "What´s on TV?"
Germans say "What´s in TV?"

I got the "in a toilet" from your post, saab.

I used the "in the toilet" as a room not a seat.
In Scandinavia toilet means the room as well as the seat.
Sighns on stations etc say Toiletter
Sorry I made a mistake there. Good you told me.

Yup, that follows.

Not in the UK, we're a bit more blunt speaking. If it hasn't got a bath (or shower) in it we don't call it a bathroom. The most euphemistic we get is when referring to public toilets as ladies or gents.

You didn't make a mistake, Saab. MontereyJack said:



It's more likely to use other terms than "in the toilet" because 'toilet' is the least polite term.

Where I come from, 'toilet' is fairly high up the politeness scale, and can be used without fear in any situation - jakes, can, crapper, pisser, ****-house, etc are much less polite.

I've noticed that, C. Izzy mentioned it also.

In the UK, toilet is considered an acceptably polite euphemism for what the roon really is (and contains) - latrine, urinal, water closet, etc, but we are often bemused by the way that Americans seem to need a further stage of euphemistic distancing - restroom, bathroom, etc.

My father calls it the lavatory.

It's used quite often in familiar company, with obvious differences relating to age, etc, as are other forms - can, shitter, john, ... .

The question is easier to answer for Russian than for English i.e. why anybody would say "на почту" but " в магазине". The answer is that a postal station was originally a sort of a flat and open platform (which you stood on) but that a store was obviously something which you'd be "in" and not "on".

My guess would be that the same sort of a consideration applies here, just a bit less obviously.

Early bus:


That's clearly something you would be on, rather than in...

We probably use bathroom for the indoor room, because America's great growth spurt came in the late 19th and 20th centuries, much later than European countries, and so we had less need to retrofit already existent older buildings with indoor plumbing--it was just always indoor for us-- now something like five generations of Americans have grown up with indoor plumbing, and our first few years are spent sitting "on the toilet" in what is in actual fact "the bathroom", and is so-called. It's only later, when we go to school, that we get much exposure to toilet-the-fixture as we have come to know it, in rooms that don't contain bathtubs or showers, so aren't commonly called "bathrooms", but rather the above other terms, some of which are older survivals, some of which are themselves euphemisms, in both Brit and US usage. "Restroom" is probably a survival from the time when women, who were thought to be fainting-prone, had in polite society a room to go and sit and "rest" when overcome, which took on toilet facilities when plumbing moved indoors. "W.C." is a Brit euphemism--Americans may know it, probably most do, but it never was one we used widely. And "loo" is allegedly a euphemism for the French "garde l'eau", watch out for water, when they used to empty the contents of their chamber pots out of their upstairs bedroom windows onto the street below, certainly a euphemism supreme. We're not more squeamish than Brits, we just squeam differently.
And as JTT notes, we have our own more "vulgar" terms. Did he mention "pisser"? (Which is a term for great approval too, in Massachusetts, incidentally)

A Danish young woman worked for UN in New York as a guide.. She had of course never heard the impression restroom.
On her first day at work an American lady asked her for the rest rooms.
The Danish woman said "We do not have any restrooms. Please be seated in any chair ".........

When the philistine business moguls were planning on closin and razing the theater at Rockefeller Center, an Art Deco masterpiece, in the 1970s--an artistic outrage later rescinded--I went down to take pictures of it before it was gone. It was all one architectural triumph after another. The restrooms had adjacent rooms that were visible from the common areas, before the privacy door to the respective toilets. The men's room had a "smoking room" intermediary. The women's room had an actual "restroom", where women could rest. Sexist much? Yes. but beautifully done in both cases. Victorianizm carried over into the moderne 1930s, and that's why I think we call them restrooms, a century-plus survival.

I have seen ladies´rooms too with a sofa to rest and mirrors and dressing table (which in Swedish is a toilett table) where you could sit down and fix your make up and hair. Of course you could smoke and gossip with your friends. Real towels in piles instead of paper or some machine blowing out hot air.
That was in the days when ladies used Eau de Toilette
In Swedish we gjorde toalett (made toilet) which means to dress up for dinner in the evening. In better houses there might have been a toalett rum ( a dressing room).
My toilet-requisites I have in a toalett väska (bag). Which inGerman is called a Kulturbeutel. When I heard it I thought it was a bag for guidebooks.

kharzi?

There is still that connection in English to this day.

Those sofas are for ladies to lay down on when they are overwhelmed by cramps.

That's interesting.

re the word toilet....

In the states, at least in the areas I've lived, we generally only use the word toilet when the specific fixture is being referred to as in "I'm cleaning the toilet" or "He/she is sitting on the toilet". Thinking about it, I'm just as likely to refer to the fixture as the commode. Recalling conversations, my husband usually calls it the commode.

When I'm at home, if someone was to ask where someone was I'd say "He/she is in the bathroom"

If I'm in public I call it the rest room. Sometimes I'll say men's room or ladies room, it depends. I personally don't ever call it the women's room. Don't know why, just don't. Probably raised with the terminology. In public, I'll ask "where's the rest room?" or tell the person I'm with "I need to use the rest room" If I was at someone's home, where I've never been, I'd ask where their rest room was. If I know where it is, I'll say I need to use the bathroom or restroom.

If I was to answer the phone at work, and the caller wanted to speak to someone who I know went to the rest room, I would say "They stepped out for a moment, they'll be right back" The caller doesn't need to know what ther persons doing, just that they'll get back to them soon. I think most people know what that means when I say it.

So yeah contrex, I can only speak for myself, but I find the world toilet vaugely vulgar, don't know why really. The world urinal makes me wince inwardly. I think that has more to do w/ the fact I rarely see one. Seeing one though really makes me think "bleech" I was talking w/ another woman the other day and said "Don't urinals look slightly pornographic to you?" She thought a second, and agreed. But I think that's again because women rarely see them. I mean pornographic more in "that's vulgar"

and nooooo....it's not because we're uptight. I know what goes on in a toilet. The bodily function doesn't bother me, it's just that, no matter how you slice it,it's an unattractive fixture, even if it's sparkling clean.

Funny world, aint it.