英和和英

発音

名詞

tea room (plural tea rooms)

1. Alternative form of tearoom: a cafe or (in gay parlance only) a public lavatory.
   • 2025 July 23, Richard Foster, “Huddersfield's overdue makeover”, in RAIL, number 1040, page 36:

     And that's not all - the historic timber tea room has been dismantled to allow the platforms to be altered. […] The tea room - one of the few timber station buildings still in front line service - will then be painstakingly rebuilt, but in a slightly different position.

語源

From tea +‎ room. In reference to a lavatory, probably as a variant of t-room (“toilet room”).

発音

• (General American) IPA: /ˈtiˌɹum/

名詞

tearoom (plural tearooms)

1. A café which serves tea, usually with light food.

   Synonym: teahouse

   • 2019 November 6, “Network News”, in Rail, page 11:

     At Rannoch, the platforms were rebuilt. Although the station tearoom couldn't be reached by rail during the closure, which started on October 5, it did help feed and sustain the workforce.

2. (euphemistic, slang) A public lavatory.

   Synonyms: teahouse, gingerbread office, (UK) cottage, (AU) beat; see also Thesaurus:bathroom

   1. (US, gay slang, dated) A meeting place for gay men.
      • 1970, Laud Humphreys, Tearoom Trade:
      • 1973, chapter II, in Deep Dick, page 21:

        I'm deathly afraid of the tearooms though, John. Some of my best friends have been entrapped and busted by the fuzz.

      • 1975, chapter III, in Hard-Headed Dick, page 39:

        I had run into Grant in a tea-room—The busy main floor crapper—a few months earlier.

      • 2014, A Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis, page 216:

        The euphemistically named "tea room" has been used in sexual subcultures among men who have sex with men (MSM) to describe public sex environments, usually public toilets, where men meet other men in sexual interaction... The term itself might be outdated...

3. (Australia) A room in a workplace set aside for tea breaks, lunch breaks, snacking, etc; a break room.

Further reading

• “tearoom”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.