tearoom

See also: tea room

English

Etymology

From tea +‎ room. In reference to a lavatory, probably as a variant of t-room ("toilet room").

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU):

  (file)

Noun

tearoom (plural tearooms)

1. A café which serves tea, usually with light food.
   • 2019 November 6, “Network News”, in Rail, page 11:

     At Rannoch, the platforms were rebuilt. Although the station tearoom couldn't be reached by rail during the closure, which started on October 5, it did help feed and sustain the workforce.

2. (euphemistic, slang) A public lavatory, particularly (US gay slang, dated) as a meeting place for homosexual men.
   • 1970, Laud Humphreys, Tearoom Trade.
   • 1973, Deep Dick, Ch. ii, p. 21:

     I'm deathly afraid of the tearooms though, John. Some of my best friends have been entrapped and busted by the fuzz.

   • 1975, Hard-Headed Dick, Ch. iii, p. 39:

     I had run into Grant in a tea-room—The busy main floor crapper—a few months earlier.

   • 2014, A Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis, p. 216:

     The euphemistically named "tea room" has been used in sexual subcultures among men who have sex with men (MSM) to describe public sex environments, usually public toilets, where men meet other men in sexual interaction... The term itself might be outdated...

3. (Australia) A room in a workplace set aside for tea breaks, lunch breaks, snacking, etc.; a break room.

Synonyms

• (cafe): See teahouse
• (public toilet used as a gay meeting place): teahouse, tea house; gingerbread office, cottage (UK); beat (Australia); see also Thesaurus:bathroom

Translations

teahouse — see teahouse

Further reading

• “tearoom”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.