2 ms·

I think it would be pretty easy to go through life in the US without ever hearing a toilet called a WC; I'm familiar with the abbreviation but I'm not even sure

• jessaustin 9y ago
  I've seen the abbreviation used on building plans in USA, in the past ten years. It did seem out of place, but all architects have some screwy habit that makes their plans more difficult to read. According to my grandfather, when he was growing up poor in southern Illinois in the 1930s, "toilet" was a crude word and people said "W.C." to be polite. Outhouses were more common than toilets, to the extent that old-timers then thought it was disgusting to defecate in the same building where one slept. Perhaps "water closet" seemed an appropriately exotic term.