A closet or small room fitted up to serve as a privy, and furnished with water-supply to flush the pan and discharge its contents into a waste-pipe below. Often abbreviated W.C.
Sometimes applied to the pan and the connected apparatus for flushing and discharge; also, loosely, to any kind of privy.
1755. Connoisseur, No. 100. It was always my office … to attend him in the water-closet when he took a cathartic.
1760. H. Walpole, Lett. to G. Montagu, 25 Oct. A little after seven, he went into the water-closet.
1819. Scott, in Lockhart, IV. 248. I am happy to learn it has that useful English comfort, a water-closet.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Builder, 409. The different parts of water-closets are made in a similar way, and sold to the plumber.
1825. Fosbroke, Encycl. Antiq., 348. Water-closet. That of the palace of the Cæsars is adorned with marble, arabesques and mosaicks.
1877. H. Robinson & Melliss, Purif. Water-carried Sewage, 1. Water-closets do not add very much to the volume of sewage.
attrib. 1844. H. Stephens, Bk. Farm, I. 218. Fine water-closet latch, with snibbing-bolt.
1873. B. Latham, Sanitary Engin., 39. A district in which the water-closet system is intended only to be partially adopted.
Hence Water-closeted a. [-ED2], fitted or provided with water-closets.
1876. Jrnl. Soc. Arts, 9 June, 725/2. A town … well water-closeted and containing no manufactories.
