Loo

How to spell loo

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce loo

What does loo mean?

1. nounAn informal British term for a toilet or the room containing one.

Loo in a sentence

• He asked the waiter where the loo was before they sat down.

• The new flat has a small loo tucked under the stairs.

Where does loo come from?

Language of origin: French

This is a chiefly British informal word for a toilet, and its origin is genuinely uncertain, which is why etymologists offer several competing accounts. The most popular theory traces it to the French phrase lieux d'aisances, literally 'places of ease', a polite term for a lavatory that British travellers may have picked up and clipped to a single syllable. A rival theory points to the old warning cry 'gardyloo', from the French gare l'eau ('watch out for the water'), shouted before chamber pots were emptied into the street. Other suggestions connect it to 'Waterloo' or to the word 'leeward'. The term is first clearly recorded in print only in the early twentieth century, so the trail had gone cold long before anyone wrote it down. Whatever its source, the modern spelling is simply three letters, with the double 'o' carrying the long 'oo' sound.

How the word is built

• loo (single root; origin disputed, no productive prefix or suffix)

Words that sound like loo

They sound the same but mean different things, so the meaning decides which spelling to write.

• lieu: Place or stead, used almost exclusively in the phrase 'in lieu of' to mean instead of or in place of.