Spend a penny

Spend a penny means to use the restroom. It comes from England in the mid-1800s when people had to pay a penny to use a public toilet.
It looks like someone forgot to pay.

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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.


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.



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