[Sca-cooks] adjective "privy" - meanings

[julian wilson]

Phlip <phlip at 99main.com> wrote:
Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> > And why do you want him to put it in the toilet, Lady's Room or
otherwise?
>
> Phlip, honey, he didn't say anything about the garderobe, cabinet or
> pissoir.
>
> -- 
> -- Jadwiga Zajaczkowa,

No, Jadwiga, he referred to the privy, which always used to be the little
shack with the crescent moon on the door.

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

Main Entry: 2privy
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural priv·ies
1 a : a small building having a bench with holes through which the user may
defecate or urinate b : TOILET 3b
2 : a person having a legal interest of privity

Saint Phlip,
CoD
COMMENT
Well, if you are unable  to check refrences in Shakespear, or Marlow, or the Paston Letters, or Froissart, or Chaucer, or Caxton, or Wynkyn de Word, - before commenting upon early-Middle English, - at least try looking at the current edition of Chamber's Dictionary -  1998 Edition, page 1308, - viz - <"Privy" [adjective] private, or belonging to a particular person; own; personal, for private use;secret [of a place, 7c]appropriate to withdrawal or retirement....&c....&c >". 
The Concise Oxford Dictionary has a very similar [but not identical entry], page 972 of my 1964 Edition
The "Chamber's" entry has 8 closely-printed lines  and only one of those - the last - quotes privy as meaning a toilet. - a meaning which - while old, is post-Mediaeval.
I would respectfully add a reminder that words changed their meanings; so quotes on their meanings have to relate to the Period of the text in which they were/are used; for what was a correct meaning for one Century may be obsolete usage 200 years later.
Please don't start a "flame war" on this one - let's keep it light-hearted.



Yours in service, 
Julian Wilson,
[aka. Messire Matthew Baker/Matthieu Besquer, Governor & Castellan of Jersey, 1486-1497: - "Si vis pacem, para bellum"]
late-medieval Re-enactor; & Historian and Master Artisan to  
"The Companie of the Duke's Leopards",
[the only medieval living-history Group
in "olde" Jersey]
		
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