powder room

plural powder rooms

1. euphemisticSynonym 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.

   3 more examples

   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

   There are separate lavatories for ladies and gentlemen in each coach and the provision of a special powder room for ladies in the first class is an entirely new feature.

   1957 April 28, “British Railways Prototype Coaches”, in Railway Magazine, page 243

   Whispers in the powder room / She cries on every tune

   1988, Womack & Womack, “Teardrops”

   Synonyms: powder closet, bathroom, latrine, necessarium, toilet, toilet room, urinal, water closet

2. euphemisticSynonym 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!

   1 more example

   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. historicalA room used to powder hair and wigs.