loo

Meanings

1. A lavatory: a room used for urination and defecation.
2. A toilet: a fixture used for urination and defecation.

1. A cry to urge on hunting dogs.

1. To urge on with cries of loo or (figuratively) by other shouting or outcry.

1. Alternative form of lanterloo: the card game.
2. The penalty paid to the pool in lanterloo for breaking certain rules or failing to take a trick.
3. An act that prompts such a penalty.
4. A game of lanterloo.
5. Any group of people.

1. To beat in the card game lanterloo.
2. To pay a penalty to the pool for breaking certain rules or failing to take a trick in lanterloo.
3. To pay any penalty to any community.

1. A half-mask, particularly (historical) those velvet half-masks fashionable in the 17th century as a means of protecting women's complexion from the sun.

1. A hot dust-bearing wind found in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and the Punjab.

1. A lieutenant.

1. A surname.

Etymology

Uncertain, although usually derived in some way from Waterloo, the site of Wellington's 1815 victory over Napoleon, likely via a pun based on water closet. Other suggested derivations include corruptions of French l'eau (“water”), lieu (“place”), lieux d'aisances (“'places of convenience': a lavatory”), lieu à l'anglaise (“'English place': a British-style lavatory”), bordalou (“a diminutive chamber pot”) or gardez l'eau (“'mind the water'”), via Scots gardyloo, formerly used in Edinburgh while emptying chamber pots out of windows; the supposed use of "Room 100" as the lavatory in Continental hotels; a popularisation of lew, a regional corruption of lee (“downwind”), in reference to shepherds' privies or the former use of beakheads on that side of the ship for urination and defecation; or a clipped form of the name of the unpopular 19th-century Countess of Lichfield Lady Harriett Georgiana Louisa Hamilton Anson, who was the subject of an 1867 prank whereby her bedroom's name-card was placed on the door to the lavatory, prompting the other guests to begin speaking of "going to Lady Louisa".