What it means
Loo is the everyday polite way to say toilet in British English. It’s the safe little word you use anywhere from a pub to your nan’s house to the office, especially when you can’t be bothered saying something blunter like bog. Usually it pops up in quick survival-mode questions like Where’s the loo? and nobody bats an eyelid.
Usage examples
"Oi, where’s the loo? If I do another lap of this pub I’m gonna explode. Down the corridor, second door left, ta."
"Halfway through the second pint at the King's Head in Hackney I had to nip to the loo, queued behind two blokes debating Arsenal's back four, missed the start of the karaoke set, and came back to find my pint claimed by the bloke at the bar with the bald head."
"The loo at my mum's house in Tunbridge Wells has been broken since Tuesday morning, the plumber from the next village said he could come Friday at three, my dad has been using the upstairs bathroom of the lodger family next door, and the household chat group has become quite spiky over the timing."
"I’m just nipping to the loo before the film starts, don’t let them nick my seat."
"You know where the loo is in here, mate, or am I about to open three cupboards and ruin my dignity?"
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Where it comes from
Likely from the French lieux d'aisances (places of ease), the polite eighteenth-century continental euphemism for toilet that British travellers brought home from Paris and shortened to lieu or loo, attested in English from the early twentieth century as the universal middle-class word for the lavatory. Competing theories link it to the cry of gardyloo (regardez l'eau) shouted from Edinburgh tenement windows before chamber pots were emptied, but the French connection remains the strongest etymological bet across most modern dictionaries of the era.
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