88 Bathroom Vocabulary Words

Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com.  Let's talk about bathroom vocabulary. 

A great way to remember vocabulary, I know that's  something that's difficult for English learners,  

is to know the words that are around you, to be  able to talk about your daily routine and to talk  

about the items in your house because that's what  you interact with the most. So today I'd like to  

help you build your vocabulary, specifically  for words that are in the bathroom, I'm going  

to be taking you around this bathroom in my house  and explaining all of the vocabulary words that  

exist here. They might not be the same that exists  in your country. So make sure that you let me know  

in the comments, if there are any things that  exist in your bathroom, that don't exist in mine.  

Before we get started, I want to explain some  words that I use to talk about this room. Look at  

these three words: bathroom, restroom, washroom.  I'm from the US and we use only two of these. 

Can you guess which two we use? You just heard  me say one of them. We use bathroom and restroom,  

but there is a difference between these a bathroom  is generally in someone's house in some kind of  

comfortable location. And a restroom is usually  used for a public situation, maybe a restaurant or  

in your office. If you need to go to the bathroom,  you might use this because it feels a little bit  

more formal. It's a little more indirect. It's a  restroom. You don't know what's happening in the  

restroom. I'm just resting. So we use restroom  generally to be a little more polite or to talk  

about bathrooms in a more formal setting. As  for the word washroom, in the US I don't think  

I've ever heard anyone use this. I could be wrong.  It's generally more associated with Canadians. So  

in Canada, they often say washroom. But anytime that I say, this is what  

they say in Canada, this is what they say in  the UK. Please just understand that I am not  

an expert in other types of English. I only know  what I've experienced here in the US. What about  

these words: toilet, loo, John, and water closet.  Well, we do use the word toilet, but we don't use  

it to talk about this room. We never say I'm going  to the toilet. It seems gross, or just too direct.  

And loo, we never say loo in the US. Also John,  we don't really say the word John either. But,  

this expression water closet. If you saw this  sign, what would you think that means? Let's say  

you're at a restaurant and you're looking  for the bathroom and you see this sign on  

a door. Would you know that that's the bathroom? You might be able to guess, but water closet or WC  

is sometimes on a bathroom door. And it just  means that's the bathroom. Now, sometimes we use  

kind of silly words to talk about the bathroom.  For example, you might hear lavatory, powder room,  

girl's room. And these are always, usually said  with that same tone of voice that I just used  

lavatory, this is a very high class way to say  bathroom. So if you are wanting to be a little  

bit silly, you might say, "Excuse me, where's  your lavatory." If you're in your friend's house,  

you might say, that'd be kind of funny. Or you  might say, "I need to go to the powder room  

to freshen up." And I think this is something  that we don't ever say seriously. It's usually  

just kind of as a little joke, "Oh, I need  to go and make sure that there's no food  

in my teeth. I'm going to go to the powder room." Or you might hear the girl's room. And this is not  

just for little girls. This is talking about the  bathroom. If you go to your friend's house and you  

need to go to the bathroom, you might ask where's  the girl's room, but only if you're a girl.  

We don't really say where's the boys room. I think  that maybe this is just because sometimes women  

are more indirect about these types of things.  I'm not sure, but occasionally you will hear these  

silly expressions used with the bathroom. Now  we have two more. What about these two words:  

porta-potty and porta-John, do you have a  porta-potty in your house? I would be very  

shocked. These are, a porta-potty or a porta-John,  usually that's what you would see it at a park  

or maybe if you go to an outdoor concert or  somewhere that doesn't have an actual bathroom  

structure or some kind of restroom outside.  So you might see these types of facilities. 

All right, now that we have cleared all that up.  When you come to the US, you can use bathroom or  

restroom, and let's get onto talking about the  items in my bathroom. Let's start off by talking  

about this. Here we have the sink. Sometimes it's  called a sink basin, but generally that's kind of  

a more formal word. If you're purchasing a  sink, you might see it called a sink basin.  

Also, we have the faucet and the hot water handle,  or the cold water handle. I only have one, but you  

might see some bathrooms that have two, that's  also pretty common. At the bottom, this thing  

inside here, down there is the drain. If  you need to fill the sink, you might say,  

plug the drain. "I need to push that  down, push the drain down so that I can  

plug the drain and fill up the sink with water." And usually, under the sink, you're going to find  

some plumbing. Plumbing are the pipes that bring  the water to your faucet, and then away from your  

drain. Notice that the B here is silent plumb-ing,  plumbing. We're going to be talking about these  

items a little bit later in this lesson. So  let's move on to the next place in the bathroom. 

All right, here we are by the toilet.  One of the features of the bathroom.  

In the US we always call this the toilet. We  don't call the room the toilet, as I mentioned.  

So on the toilet, we have two lids. This  is in the US, we have the lid and we have  

the seat, which can also go up. And this is always  a point of contention in marriages, right? Put  

the seat down. And this is what a lot of wives  say, put the seat down, don't leave the seat up. 

I'm curious if you have ever had this  discussion in your house. Then we have the lid  

and we have here, this is the toilet bowl. You  can imagine a bowl. And back here is the flusher  

or the toilet handle, because we can push this  to flush the toilet. Don't forget to flush the  

toilet when you're finished, to flush the toilet.  Our bathroom, we have installed an extra feature  

on our toilet. It is this thing. It is a bidet.  This is becoming a little more common in the US  

but it is certainly not a well-known feature of  a toilet in the US but because my husband and  

I have lived abroad, we know about bidets,  so we have a bidet installed in our toilet. 

Also around the toilet, you will see there is  a plunger here for helping the toilet to flow  

freely. And we have a toilet brush for cleaning  the toilet, some extra toilet paper, but here, if  

you can see on this side, we have our toilet paper  holder and our toilet paper. I have a question for  

you. Do you have your toilet paper coming over the  top, or do you have it coming from behind. For me,  

I prefer it like this coming from the top, but I  know everyone has different opinions about this.  

Sometimes on the back of the toilet, you  will see a box of tissues. In the US,  

we almost always call these Kleenex. This is  the brand, but it's also just what we generally  

call this type of item. Or for us, we have a  baby, so we have some baby wipes also on the  

back of the toilet. Oh, we have one more thing. This. Do you know what this is? Can you guess?  

It is called a squatty potty. I actually  got this online. I got this from somebody  

in my city online. Somebody online said,  "I'm selling a squatty potty thing that  

you put under your toilet. Does anyone want to  buy it?" And I said, "Me, I want to buy it." So  

I met her at a gas station, kind of felt like  a drug deal because she hopped out of her car.  

She said, "Are you here for the squatty potty?"  I said, "Yes, I am." And I gave her my 10 bucks  

and she gave me the squatty potty and we left.  But this is a kind of a device that helps your  

body supposedly to be in a better position so that  your bowels can move freely. So I'm not sure if it  

actually works or not, but it's something that I  thought was pretty cool. And it was worth the try. 

Next, let's talk about the shower or the tub. Now  in my bathroom here, we have two bathrooms in my  

house, in this bathroom. We do not have a tub.  I didn't feel like cleaning our other bathroom.  

Otherwise I would show you a tub, but this is what  it looks like. Most bathrooms have a tub. And then  

there's also a shower. This bathroom does not have  a shower curtain. A shower curtain is the kind  

of cloth that comes over. Instead, we have these  glass shower doors. You can barely see them in the  

video, but there are glass doors that block the  water from spraying everywhere in our bathroom. 

In our shower, we have a shower head, and  sometimes the shower head is detachable,  

or sometimes it's just fixed on the wall.  There's also a shower handle where you can  

turn on the hot and cold water. I'm not going to  turn that on right now. So I don't get too wet.  

In our shower, we have a squeegee because we  have these glass doors. When they get wet, it's  

good to take care of them and not let the water  accumulate on the sides. So we will squeegee them  

after taking a shower. And this is a  verb and a noun. This is a squeegee,  

and I need to squeegee the doors.  Sometimes I squeegee the walls too.  

This is my three year old son's favorite activity  to squeegee everything. It is pretty fun,  

but to take care of our shower. On this end  of our shower, we have our shower goods.  

There is shampoo, conditioner. There's also liquid  soap and bar soap. You might have both in your  

shower, or you might have some kind of shower  scrub. This is a liquid that has some kind of  

little abrasive pieces in it to scrub your skin. A lot of people will use maybe a loofa or a sponge  

or a washcloth to wash their body. We have this  little, it's the thing that we got in Korea,  

well, it's not the same one from Korea, but  it's this little rag. You can put your hand  

in it and it's a little bit scratchy, and you can  kind of just wash yourself with this. I like it. 

On the wall of our shower. We have tiles.  These are the shower tiles. A lot of people  

like this look, but they don't like taking care  of it because in between here is called grout. And  

you have to occasionally clean the grout in your  shower. Maybe you need to get an old toothbrush  

and scrape it. You need to do something. We  have this spray that somebody gave us. It cleans  

without having to rinse, spray it on your shower  once a day. I don't do that. I spray it maybe once  

a week, if I remember, but you can spray it on the  tiles and maybe it makes it so you don't have to  

scrub them. I don't know. We'll see what happens,  but there's different products like that too. 

You might notice here in the bottom  of our shower is a little turtle.  

It's a secret that all Americans keep a little  toy turtle in the bottom of their shower.  

Don't tell our secret. Just kidding. It's my son's  toy. One more thing is you might, when I hear  

the term shower stall, a shower stall is  generally in a more public place, like in a gym  

or in a dormitory where there's multiple people  showering at the same time. A shower stall  

are going to be those individual shower spots.  There might be a shower curtain. There might be  

nothing. It might just be open, but this is kind  of a more public thing. So we don't really use the  

term shower stall to talk about the bath shower  area in your house. That's more in a public place. 

In our bathroom. We have several types of  towels. One type of towel is simply a bath  

towel. And we hang that Bechtel on a hook, or  you might have a towel rack or a towel bar where  

you hang your towel. We only have these little  hooks to hang our towels on. You also might use  

a washcloth. I mentioned this previously that  you might use this in the shower. For me, I use  

this to wash off my face in the morning or in the  evening. And I hang it on this little rack to dry.  

Another type of towel you might have is simply  a hand towel. All of these are pretty self  

explanatory, bath towel, wash cloth, I guess you  could wash anything with that, and hand towel.  

Can you guess what you wash with a hand towel?  You use it to dry your hands and it's hanging on  

this ring to let it air out in between washings. Next, let's talk about some of the items which  

might be in your bathroom. On our counter, we  have a comb. This is not a brush. I have some hair  

ties, my glasses, some deodorant, and a contact  lens case. You might just say also a contact case.  

I have my jewelry. There is an outlet for  plugging things in. On the other side,  

we have a soap dispenser here. Then we have our  toothbrush holder. Inside that toothbrush holder  

is a toothbrush and toothpaste beside it is an  electric toothbrush. There is some floss, some  

more deodorant, and underneath here is a glasses  lens, cleaner and another glasses lens cloth. 

A lot of bathrooms in the US we'll have a little  closet or some shelves for linens. If this is  

a separate area, or if it is in your closet, we  still call this a linen closet. Linens are sheets,  

towels, blankets. Mine is a little bit messy,  a little bit disorganized, but it's okay.  

So here, these are where I keep my linens. On the  other side of that linen closet is another shelf  

where we keep some bandaids, extra shampoo, these  types of things. And we could call this a medicine  

cabinet, but it's not necessarily a cabinet.  You're going to see that in just a moment.  

Instead, we'll still say that this is in the  closet and these are some extra bathroom items. 

Some other items that you might have  in your bathroom is some contact  

solution. This goes with my contact lenses that  I wear occasionally, some contact lens solution.  

You might also have some Q-tips. I don't really  use these, but for some reason, we have them.  

Instead of Q-tips, you might have cotton balls  that look like this or cotton rounds. Sometimes  

people use these to take off makeup or for other  things, I guess, but you might have other kinds of  

cotton supplies in your bathroom. In the bathroom. You have some  

tweezers and fingernail clippers.  These are giant fingernail covers.  

And sometimes on the fingernail clippers,  or you might have a separate piece as well,  

there is a nail file for filing your nails.  Occasionally, this is called an Emery board.  

I haven't really heard this an awful lot in my  life, but if someone said, "Oh, I need to buy an  

Emery board." I would know what they were talking  about, but it's not as common as a nail file,  

which is pretty clear, right? It's a nail file for  filing your nails. For shaving. You need a razor.  

Sometimes it comes with some extra razorblades. I  think Dan has already finished using all of those.  

This is his razor. We also have some  shaving cream and maybe use some aftershave. 

I don't know if this is true in your house, but my  side of the bathroom counter has way more things  

than Dan's side of the counter. I think in his  drawer, oh, there's nothing but an empty box.  

But on my side, there are quite a few  things. For example, I have some makeup,  

some different bottles of potions, like makeup  remover. I have... this is just some witch hazel,  

but it can be used as like a toner for your  skin. And I have some other hair supplies like  

clips and some things for my hair like  Bobby pins. I'm not sure why we say Bobby,  

but these are called Bobby pins and you can  put them in your hair to keep your hair back. 

In the bathroom. There's also a curling iron  for curling your hair. You might also have  

a straightener or you might have a hairdryer. Do  you know what? This hairdryer I got two weeks ago  

because the hairdryer I had before that I have  had since high school. This hairdryer was like  

15 years old, is amazing. No, I guess older than  that, maybe like 16, 17 years old. And finally, it  

died, but I can't believe it lasted that long. It  was just a cheap hairdryer from the grocery store,  

but it lasted a long, long, long time.  And finally it just stopped working. 

So I have a new hairdryer. Hopefully  this one will also last for 15 years.  

If you choose not to use a hairdryer, you can  do what's called air drying. So you might say,  

I often say this, "I need to air dry my hair."  And this is the opposite of using a hairdryer.  

I need to use the hairdryer or I need to air dry  my hair. Generally, they say that air drying your  

hair is better for your hair. So usually I air  dry my hair for a while. And then if I'm going  

to go to bed and it's still a little wet, I'll  use the hairdryer a little bit just to kind of  

make it so that I'm not sleeping in a wet mop. The final thing I'd like to talk about in the  

bathroom is laundry and the trashcan  with the trash bag. Your laundry  

might be in a laundry basket. You might call this  a laundry hamper. I personally don't use the word  

hamper. It feels a little bit old fashioned, but  it might just be a regional difference in the US  

where some places say hamper, some places  say basket, this is the laundry basket. This  

is kind of soft, but you might have a hard  plastic laundry basket too. In the laundry  

is dirty laundry. And this just means dirty  clothes. There's dirty laundry. I need to put  

it in the washing machine. And then after that,  I'll fold it and I'll put it away in the closet. 

All right. We talked about a lot of bathroom  and vocabulary in this video. I hope it was  

useful to you. I went to know tell me in the  comments below, what are some items that I  

missed or what exists in your bathroom  that doesn't exist in my bathroom? 

Let me know in the comments and make sure that  you read other comments as well, so that you can  

learn about other expressions and other places  around the world. Thank you so much for learning  

English with me and I'll see you again next Friday  for a new video here on my YouTube channel. Bye. 

The next step is to download my free ebook: Five  Steps to Becoming a Confident English Speaker.  

You'll learn what you need to do  to speak confidently and fluently.  

Don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel  for more free lessons. Thanks so much. Bye.