Closets and Wardrobes and toilets and vests and things....

[Carol]

Potioncat:
> And while we're on kitchens. What is an Aga?
> 
> Geoff:
> A large stove for heating and producing hot water with side ovens
for baking. They are usually solid fuel, coal or wood although there
are oil-fired installations nowadays.

Carol:
No naural gas or electric heating, then?

Geoff:
> In message 36281, Carol (wot, `er again?) wrote:
> > Then you're the person I need to consult! The manuscript I'm
editing now calls a man's sleeveless tank-top shirt (what the Brits, I
think, would call a "vest") a "wifebeater."
> 
Geoff:
> I must lead a sheltered existence. Like Lee, I've never heard the
term before. 

Carol:
Nor have I, which is why I started the thread.

Geoff:
In UK speak, a vest is an item of underwear between the shirt and the
body – if you wear one. (I haven't for several years). 
> 
> Sometimes also called a singlet if it's the sleeveless type such as
 runners wear.

Carol:
"Singlet" might do, though it's also used to refer to the one-piece
garment that wrestlers wear. I think that "singlet" for a men's
sleeveless shirt might suggest something a bit looser and more like an
athletic jersey than a so-called wifebeater. I did, BTW, see the term
"tank" used to refer to such tops. Don't young Englishmen wear such
things as outer garments? If so, what do they call them? 

Geoff:
> Interestingly, this word ["lavatory'] has dropped out of UK English
recently. You rarely hear it used in conversation. And in public,
where you used to look for the sign "Public Lavatories" – or the more
delicate "Public Conveniences" – now you look for plain and simple
"Toilets".

Carol:
Oh, those pragmatic brits. I guess it's an indication that washing
your hands in a lavatory (sink) is only incidental to the primary
purpose of that room. But whether you call it a lavatory or a toilet,
it appears that the same term is used for the room and the wash basin
or "porcelain fixture," as someone delicately called it, in British
English. Metonymy, that's what it is, like "crown" for the queen or
"head" of cattle. But that still doesn't answer my original question,
which is how the room that Moaning Myrtle lives in, as opposed to the
toilet that she dives into to get to the U-bend (or S-bend, in HBP),
is called. the U.S. edition refers to it (inaccurately) as "Moaning
Myrtle's bathroom." What term is used in the UK edition?

Carol, who should probably do Catlady-style posts, too, but likes to
stay with one topic per post
>