# loo

Pronunciation: say "LOO" US /lu/, UK /luː/

## Noun

1. A toilet: the room, or the fixture in it, that people use for urinating and defecating. *(colloquial, Commonwealth, Ireland, UK)*
   - Simple: British word for a toilet, or the room with a toilet in it.
   - _Excuse me, could you tell me where the loo is?_
   - _The pub's loos are down the stairs at the back, past the kitchen._
2. A hot, dust-laden wind that blows across Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and the Punjab. *(India)*
   - Simple: A very hot, dusty wind that blows in parts of northern India, such as Bihar and the Punjab.
   - _By noon the loo was blowing across the plains, and shopkeepers pulled down their shutters until evening._
   - _Doctors warned farmers to cover their heads against the loo during the harvest._
3. Alternative form of lanterloo: an old trick-taking card game in which a player who takes no trick pays into a pool. — Alternative form of lanterloo: the card game.
   - Simple: Alternative form of lanterloo. It is an old card game. Anyone who wins no tricks pays into a pot.
   - _After supper the guests sat down to loo, and the stakes climbed with every hand._
   - _Each player at loo is dealt three cards, and anyone who takes no trick pays into the pool._

## Noun

4. A half-mask, especially the velvet kind fashionable in the 17th century, which women wore to protect their complexions from the sun. *(obsolete)*
   - Simple: A mask that covers half the face, like the velvet ones women wore long ago to keep the sun off.

## Other meanings

- (noun) An officer holding the rank of lieutenant.
- (interjection) Used as a shout to urge hunting dogs on.
- (noun) In the card game lanterloo, the penalty a player pays into the pool for breaking certain rules or failing to take a trick, or an act that incurs it.
- (verb) In lanterloo, to pay a penalty into the pool for breaking certain rules or failing to take a trick.
- (verb) In lanterloo, to beat another player so that they must pay into the pool, usually by leaving them without a trick.
- (verb) To urge on with cries of loo, or figuratively with other shouting or outcry, usually followed by at, upon or an infinitive.
- (verb) To pay a penalty of any kind to a community.

## Origin

**Meaning 1** — No one knows for sure. The usual view ties it somehow to Waterloo, where Wellington defeated Napoleon in 1815, probably through a pun on water closet. Other proposals include garbled forms of French l'eau ("water"), lieu ("place"), bordalou ("a small chamber pot") and gardez l'eau ("mind the water"), the last by way of Scots gardyloo, which people in Edinburgh shouted when tipping chamber pots out of windows. Some point instead to "Room 100", supposedly the lavatory in Continental hotels, or to lew, a regional form of lee ("downwind"). Another story makes it a clipping of the name of a Lady Louisa, whose bedroom name-card was said to have been put on a lavatory door as a prank in 1867.
**Meaning 3** — A clipped form of lanterloo.
**Meaning 4** — English took it from French loup, which means "wolf" and also "mask, eyemask". Lobo, lupus and wolf share its origin, so they are doublets.
**Meaning 2** — From Hindi lū, ultimately from Sanskrit ulkā (“flame”).

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/loo (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).