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English Idiom: Spend a penny
How would you like it if you were trying to spend a penny without paying and someone started to take away the portable toilet?
Would you think it was funny?
The first thing to know is that spend a penny is a euphemism that means to use the restroom.
In mid-nineteenth-century England, coin-operated locks were placed on public toilets.
A person could not open the toilet stall door unless they paid a penny.
If you think about it, pay toilets are a terrible thing.
Poor people often need to use public bathrooms.
Requiring them to pay is taxing people who use the bathroom.
As another thought, it’s not a ‘public’ toilet if only the paying public can use it.
I can remember that when I was a kid in eastern Canada, my father talked about having to pay 10 cents to open a coin-operated lock on a public toilet stall in a department store.
Many Westerners feel uncomfortable saying that they are going to the toilet.
In Britain, you may hear a person say they will spend a penny instead.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 67.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.