If I enter "El aseo matinal" into my favorite online translator, I get "The morning toilet" as the first choice in English. The alternate terms for "toilet" in that translation are listed as: cleaning, grooming, and wash.
"Toilet" in English derives from Toilette in French, which shares a latin root with many other European languages.
Toile in French is a piece of fabric. Toilette is the diminutive form -- a small piece of fabric -- ie: a washcloth. (As an aside, it is from toile, pronounced "twol". that English gets the word towel.)
In common usage in French: "faire la toilette" is to wash up. In English the word toilet originally referred to the act of washing up or the room (or area in the house) where one would wash up -- ie: the washroom or the bathroom.
Only later did it come to mean the commode (originally called a crapper). It was a somewhat peculiar twist of American architecture that, as plumbing fixtures used for disposal of bodily waste came indoors, they were placed in the washroom. In most pre-war European architecture the washroom was a different room from the water closet (the room with the commode).
Even in the 1920s the term "toilet" in American English still referred largely to the act of washing up.
In American English we still use the term "toiletries" to refer to all the things we use when we wash up. We even put a toiletries bag in our luggage. Got nothing to do with disposal of bodily wastes.
But over time the American fondness for metaphors have migrated the word "toilet" to mean the commode. And going to the bathroom means using the commode.
Today folks in most countries around the world have learned to direct American tourist asking for the toilet to the water closet. And over time the term "toilet" has come to mean the commode, or at least has that as an alternate meaning.
Oddly perhaps, the Spanish word "aseo", which is generally translated into English as "toilet", does not share the same root as the French toilette. But even though it is generally translated into English as "toilet", it is in the "wash up" sense of the word "toilet", not the metaphorical reference to the commode.
Or so I understand. Not being a European, but rather being an American, I can only claim this as my observation.
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
