powder room

Noun

powder room (plural powder rooms)

1. (euphemistic) Synonym of ladies' room: a lavatory intended for use by women.
   • If you'll excuse me, I need to visit the powder room to see a man about a dog.
   • They are the authors of the small powder room in the Hofbrau House at Broadway and Fifty-third Street, New York, a very modern creation.1927, E.A. Park, chapter IX, in New Backgrounds for a New Age, page 173

   Synonyms:

   powder closet, bathroom, latrine, necessarium, toilet, toilet room, urinal, water closet, WC, cloaca

2. (euphemistic) Synonym of half bath: a small room with a toilet and sink but no bathtub or shower.
   • The house — four stories high and 22 feet wide — has five bedrooms, three full bathrooms and a powder room, along with three fireplaces and a finished basement with a gym and laundry.2025 October 28, Vivian Marino, “Lily Allen and David Harbour List Their Brooklyn Brownstone”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC

   Synonyms:

   half bath

3. A room used to store gunpowder, particularly (historical) on a ship equipped with cannon.
   • Are you insane? Don't take a candle into the powder room!
   • Mutiny is a thing of the fatallest nature in all enterprises whatsoever; a thing so incalculable, swift-frightful; not to be dealt with in fright. But mutiny in a Robespierre Convention, above all,—it is like fire seen sputtering in the ship’s powder-room!1837, Thomas Carlyle, “To Finish the Terror”, in The French Revolution: A History […], volume III (The Guillotine), London: James Fraser, […], →OCLC, book VI (Thermidor)

   Synonyms:

   powder magazine

4. (historical) A room used to powder hair and wigs.