A friend mentioned a cloakroom the other day — a little room near the entrance of his elementary school, many years ago, with a sink and toilet. Huh?
I have a vivid memory of a cloakroom from second grade: Miss M. once attempted to quiet us down by throwing her shoes at us as we donned our coats in there. The cloakroom was a genuine room, a small one, with hooks lining three walls. No sink, no toilet. No cloaks either, just coats and hats and mittens and gloves and boots — and shoes flying. Did every classroom in my elementary school have a cloakroom? I have no idea.
The Oxford English Dictionary gives this definition:
A room for the temporary storage of coats, bags, etc., esp. in a large public building, as a theatre, school, railway station, etc., typically near the entrance; such a room containing or adjoining toilets, facilities for washing, etc.; (hence, euphem.) a toilet for public use.
The first citation is from 1823. I find it dispiriting to think that our ancestors at least sometimes stored “coats, bags, etc.” in the presence of a public toilet. Talk about a multi-purpose room.
A later meaning (first citation 1865):
Chiefly Brit. and Irish English. A small room in a private home, typically close to the front entrance, which may be used to store coats, hats, shoes, etc., and which may also contain a toilet and often a washbasin.
Now frequently used euphemistically in advertising to denote any small room containing a toilet, regardless of whether there is also storage space.
That makes me think that
cloakroom and
water closet might be roughly synonymous. The
OED identifies
water closet as “chiefly
arch.,
hist., or
euphem., except in the abbreviated form
W.C.”
A still later meaning of
cloakroom (first citation 1878):
U.S. Politics. A private room adjacent to a legislative chamber of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. where members of Congress and other authorized individuals can meet, work, or relax.
Two cloakrooms lead off each chamber, one for each party. These rooms were originally for the storage of coats, etc.
No surprise that the
cloak of
cloakroom means just what you’d expect: “a loose outer garment worn by both sexes over their other clothes.” I was beginning to hope that
cloak might be related to
cloaca, “a privy,” “a sewer or drain, esp. the main one serving a particular town or district.”
Wardrobe, by the way, first meant “a privy, a latrine.”
Reader, did you go to a school antique enough to have anything called a cloakroom?
