Euphemistically yours

We, civilized folks often boast about hygiene and dutifully practice the same in public though exercising hygiene in private is one’s own privilege and option.  I could cite many instances on these but I refrain from those considering time and space. But have we ever heard about verbal hygiene? Our words sound less offensive and more pleasant when we choose to name something as something else, The Sunday morning newspaper sported a lengthy column on the innovations the Japanese had introduced in the toilet field. Reading through the article, I became aware how our language gets polished day by day especially in this field. Toilet itself was a more pleasant word when youngsters found it necessary to call it more  friendly as loo. Public places preferred to call it as his or hers. Language barriers necessitated to replace it with just a figure. Now people like to call it a rest room. In another decade it would be called with more pleasant words as the Japanese writer  Junichiro Tanazaki chooses to call it a place of spiritual repose. He claims that some poets had their finest ideas springing from there. I remember clarifying my doubt to one of the less qualified plumbers  regarding the name of a cleaning device used in Indian toilets. He instantly declared that the object of my interest is a health faucet. How artistically the engineers clouded the clumsy facts! The Japanese technology goes a little forward and provided as many as eight operations on a simple toilet seat – raise the lid, raise the seat, big flush, small flush, rear bidet, front bidet, dry and stop. The user needs to educate him/herself to avoid any kind of embarrassment in private. Beware of going to Japan in future.