lavatory
Americannoun
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lavatories
plural
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a room fitted with equipment for washing the hands and face and usually with flush toilet facilities.
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a flush toilet; water closet.
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a bowl or basin with running water for washing or bathing purposes; washbowl.
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any place where washing is done.
noun
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Also called: toilet, water closet, WC.
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a sanitary installation for receiving and disposing of urine and faeces, consisting of a bowl fitted with a water-flushing device and connected to a drain
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a room containing such an installation
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the washing place in a convent or monastic establishment
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of lavatory
1325–75; Middle English lavatorie < Late Latin lavātōrium washing-place, equivalent to Latin lavā ( re ) to wash + -tōrium -tory 2
Explanation
A lavatory is a bathroom or a restroom. You should go to a restaurant's lavatory to wash your hands before dinner. Lavatory is a slightly formal way to say "bathroom." Most people would never refer to this room in their own homes as a lavatory, although they might use this word for public restrooms in schools, hospitals, or other buildings. In the U.K., a lavatory is just a toilet, and its earliest meaning was "washbasin," from the Latin root lavatorium, or "place for washing."
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Respectfully: the only thing I want to do at 3:33 a.m. is use the lavatory or kick the cat out of the bedroom.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
In a tongue-in-cheek post to Instagram, Glass Animals - best known for their 2020 sleeper-hit Heat Waves - claimed culpability for the lunar lavatory malfunctions.
From BBC ● Apr. 10, 2026
Much of the action in the show takes place in the lavatory, with the women plotting to make money or manipulate their partners.
From BBC ● Jun. 27, 2025
Lambton, a photographer, traveled all over Britain to bring us this visual history of the lavatory.
From New York Times ● Nov. 23, 2024
He knows about Patricia in two days because she got out of the bed to go to the lavatory when she was supposed to use a bedpan and collapsed and died in the lavatory.
From "Angela's Ashes: A Memoir" by Frank McCourt
The facility hosts 85 beds with the capacity to expand to 100 and includes a mix of dormitories, lavatories, a kitchen and laundry facilities.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 1, 2026
He urges athletes to choose window seats in the middle of the aircraft, away from the most-trafficked areas—the front, where everyone enters, and the rear, near the galley and the lavatories.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 5, 2025
"We take this opportunity to urge passengers to use lavatories only for the purposes that they are meant for," it said.
From BBC ● Mar. 11, 2025
Currently, there are also updated men’s and women’s lavatories next to gates C2 and C9, and a renovated women’s restroom near gates D23 through D25, the airport wrote on a webpage covering the renovations.
From Washington Times ● Sep. 30, 2023
Everywhere I went nothing grew except near lavatories.
From "Kaffir Boy: An Autobiography" by Mark Mathabane
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
