04 March 2011

Why do the British use "bog" to refer to a toilet ?

I encountered this sentence while reading P.D. James' The Skull Beneath The Skin:
"You'll be beholden to Mr. Gorringe for nothing but his light and heating and the water that flushes his bog."
A quick search this morning finds "bog-roll" for toilet paper (although a "giant bog roll" apparently refers to paper kitchen towels), and "bog standard" to mean ordinary or average:
But, why 'bog standard'? It may be the association with the word bog, which has long been used in the UK to mean toilet... The other most often-repeated theory of the derivation is that it is a mispronunciation of 'box standard', the term referring to unmodified goods coming straight from the box.
There is some discussion re possible etymology of bog=toilet at The Phrase Finder, but I haven't found a satisfactory answer.



The book, BTW, is a classic English-country-house-murder mystery, set in a castle on an island where a half dozen people have reasons to be pleased about the victim's death.  The detective is Cordelia Gray (not James' iconic Adam Dalgliesh).  I rated the book 3+ ("pretty good"), not the 4+ required to make the "recommended books" category in the sidebar, so this post gets filed only under "English language."

19 comments:

  1. I'm not sure but I have a vague memory of hearing that in "bog standard", bog is an acronym and the B is for British. Can't remember the rest.
    Not sure what the root of its slang use for toilet is.

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  2. It's also common in australia.

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  3. The place I go for explanations of phrases is World Wide Words.

    Unfortunately, all Michael Quinion can say there is "we don't know".

    The acronym is supposedly from "British or German", but that's as clear an example of folk etymology as you're likely to see.

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  4. I always assumed it was because in times of yore people would go crap in the nearest bog (swamp).

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  5. The Online Etymology Dictionary says of the word bog itself:
    bog
    c.1500, from Gaelic & Irish bogach "bog," from adj. bog "soft, moist," from PIE *bhugh-, from base *bheugh- "to bend" (see bow (v.)). Bog-trotter applied to the wild Irish from 1670s.

    I suppose it's possible that the toilet was referred to because one must bend to use it; before the sit toilet, one would have bent even more.

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  6. I would imagine, that in the days before flush toilets, the mass of excrement below the toilet, in an earth-closet, for instance, might have resembled a peat-bog.

    Yes, we brits use the term quite a lot. Giant bog-roll for kitchen paper? Nope. never ever heard of that. Until now.

    However, we, in turn derive some amusement from the american euphemism "bathroom".
    If it hasn't got a bath in it, then it's not a bathroom.
    And not all of our bathrooms have porcelain thrones.

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    1. Your comment is many years old, but I want to reply anyways. I am watching a movie called Slaughterhouse Rulez, and the kids keep saying "bog" throughout the movie. I have never heard the term so naturally I had to look it up. The term did not fit what we Americans use it as, which is basically swamps or marshes. Anyways, coming here I finally learned what the hell they were referring to.

      I started laughing my ass off by the end of your comment. I never realized that bathroom was a funny word to you. I spent 6 months in Australia, and don't recall ever getting made fun of for the term. You are correct about saying bathroom I guess. Seems to be another example of all thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs!To be honest though I don't recall if they said loo or something else. Guess it just wasn't worthy of my attention. However, when I read the term bog rolls I fell in love. To me it's a ridiculous way to say toilet paper, and I shall introduce it to my vocabulary from here on out lol. So thank you for this new information. Bog rolls shall bring me lots of laughs for a long time.

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  7. 'Bog Standard' is a mutation of 'Box Standard'. A toy big in Britain was the construction set 'Meccano'. This was originally sold in two sets. 'Box Standard' was the cheaper basic set. And 'Box Deluxe' which was the more expensive one. This too mutated into another British saying, 'Dogs Bollocks'. Which means something is very good or premium. 'Box Standard' changed to 'Bog Standard' and 'Box Deluxe' changed to 'Dogs Bollocks' but neither lost their original meaning.

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  8. Anon (are you a QI staffer)?, your theory is discussed at the link in the post, which concludes with these sentences:

    "We may not be able to pin down that phrase's origin. What we can do is refute a story that was broadcast in the BBC's quiz show QI in November 2005. The researchers for the show put into the mouth of the normally erudite and knowledgeable Stephen Fry the notion that early construction sets were labelled 'box standard' and 'box deluxe':

    Fry: In the early years of the 20th century, children's construction sets, like Meccano, were sold in two kinds, labelled "Box Standard" and "Box Deluxe". And that, or so they say and persuade me, is where we get the two phrases "bog standard" and "dog's bollocks"!

    These two ideas - one that 'bog standard' comes from 'box standard', which is plausible enough but, as we have seen, lacking any supporting evidence, and secondly, that 'the dog's bollocks' comes from 'box deluxe', which is pure invention. Even if they could come up with such a box label, and that remains noticeably lacking, how is that linguistic jump supposed to have occurred, and why the long gap between the construction sets and the phrase being found in print?

    Fry did at least seem to have less than 100% faith in the story and qualified it with etymology's most telling weasel words "or so they say..."."

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    1. I will say, there is some reasoning behind the box deluxe thing, as Brits are quite fond of Spoonerisms.

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  9. Lol. I'm not a Q.I. staffer but I am a Q.I. viewer. It must be where I picked it up. You know what they say, 'the mind is a magpie.'

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  10. British Or German Standard! That's it!
    It used to mean that something was of a really good quality, reliable.
    Then over time it came to mean "well reliable, yeah, but boring!". Just a load of whatever.

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  11. I'd imagine the Dogs Bollocks is just a switch of the first letters of Box Deluxe. It's fairly common within my family to swap first letters around to poke fun at things, so I can see that being a reason it came into common usage - it would have taken a while to get into common usage as at first it would just be the family phrase, but eventually leaks out into general usage?

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  12. bog came from the war when they were fighting the germans in the war they used a bog hole in the ground to go , first used by the germans , britts started useing the word ,

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    1. ?? as far as I know, there is no German word "bog." It doesn't make sense that Germans would use an English word to refer to a toilet. ??

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  13. I've always assumed that 'bog' for toilet derives from the common Irish usage where bog means general wild country or moorland. In houses without their own water supply, you take a spade and head out to the bog. My private school in the 1960s had (and presumably still has) its own argot: the phrase was 'going to the woods', explained as deriving from some legendary time when the normal flush toilets were out of service.

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  14. I suspect that you are all overthinking things.

    Bogs tend to stink.

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  15. when water runs out of a bog its brown coloured because of the tannins from the peat. There are still large areas of bog land in Britain, primarily in Scotland, but there are smaller areas in Northern England, which are in National Parks either owned by the National Trust or privately. In the 1800's when most of the rail tracks where being constructed across Northern England and Scotland, much of the land was devoid of people and especially public buildings. These workers would build temperary homes and create make-shift toilets. Toilets where usually built over peat surfaces of moorland. They would dig down to the water table and then create a seat to sit on. Peat water is acidic especially on the moors in Yorkshire and across the highlands of scotland, which meant it would disolve the waste. The use of the word bog is just an handed down word. Bare in mind, that those who lived in South spoke the queen's english and with elogance. Those in the North where largely forgotten, because populations levels where far lower than those in London and the South. The Midlands is pretty much overspil from the South. So words like bog, would never be used in polite company in the South, but in the North they where used almost as every day slang words to mean the same thing. For example bog roll - toilet paper and giant bog roll = kitchen paper towels. Northerns had to mainly educate themselves and came up with some crazy fun names for things, that would never have even been thought about in the South.

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  16. The word is often used figuratively in colloquial British English and Hiberno-English as a noun to mean "nonsense", an expletive following a minor accident or misfortune, or an adjective to mean "poor quality" or "useless". Similarly, common phrases like "Bollocks to this!" and "That's a load of old bollocks" generally indicate contempt for a certain task, subject or opinion. Conversely, the word also figures in idiomatic phrases such as "the dog's bollocks" or more simply "the bollocks" (as opposed to just "bollocks"), which will refer to something which is admired, approved of or well-respected.

    It has been suggested that bollocks came to have its modern meaning of "nonsense" because clergymen were notorious for talking nonsense during their sermons.

    The word bollocks goes all the way back to the 14th century, used in wycliffe's bible in 1382.

    The term dogs bollocks while seemingly obscure to its beginnings. Dates back only fairly recently to 1989. It supposedly comes from a typographical sequence of colon and then a dash. This resembles male genitals and was commonly used up until around 1990. This sequence was used on lists and speeches, and was also used by Tony Blair on one of his speeches, where someone was heard to say he talks the dogs bollocks when referring to how good his speech was. This typographical sequence was also the very first emoticon.

    The Oxford English Dictionary says the following mark (":— ") is entitled "the dog’s bollocks", defined as: "typogr. a colon followed by a dash, regarded as forming a shape resembling the male sexual organs." The usage is cited to the year 1949. There is a miss match in years but i dont think thats important because its still contempary.

    This phrase has found its way into popular culture for example a brewer in England makes the 'Dogs Bollocks' from Wychwood Brewery and there is also a large cocktail called the Dog's Bollocks. Its a fairly recent slang word.

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