Latrinalia is a type of deliberately inscribed or etched marking made on

latrine A latrine is a toilet or an even simpler facility that is used as a toilet within a sanitation system. For example, it can be a communal trench in the earth in a camp to be used as emergency sanitation, a hole in the ground ( pit latrine), or ...

s; that is, bathrooms or lavatory walls. It can take the form of

art Art is a diverse range of cultural activity centered around ''works'' utilizing creative or imaginative talents, which are expected to evoke a worthwhile experience, generally through an expression of emotional power, conceptual ideas, tec ...

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

s, or

word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...

s, including

poetry Poetry (from the Greek language, Greek word ''poiesis'', "making") is a form of literature, literary art that uses aesthetics, aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meaning (linguistics), meanings in addition to, or in ...

and personal reflections. Other types of latrinalia include political commentary and notes on love as well as derogatory (sharing low opinions) comments and pictures. Humor is also common, such as the phenomenon observed on some college campuses of writing puns about grout in the grouted spaces between tiles. When done without the

property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, re ...

owner's

consent Consent occurs when one person voluntarily agrees to the proposal or desires of another. It is a term of common speech, with specific definitions used in such fields as the law, medicine, research, and sexual consent. Consent as understood i ...

, it constitutes

vandalism Vandalism is the action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property. The term includes property damage, such as graffiti and defacement directed towards any property without permission of the owner. The t ...

. Some venues have attempted to curb such vandalism by installing in the lavatory large

blackboard A blackboard or a chalkboard is a reusable writing surface on which text or drawings are made with sticks of calcium sulphate or calcium carbonate, better known as chalk. Blackboards were originally made of smooth, thin sheets of black or da ...

s and providing free

chalk Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock. It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor. Ch ...

; it is hoped that patrons will avail themselves of the blackboard and chalk rather than applying their latrinalia directly to the walls or toilet stalls.

Study and etymology

An important work in the study of latrinalia is

Allen Walker Read Allen Walker Read (June 2, 1906 – October 16, 2002) was an American etymologist and lexicographer. Born in Minnesota, he spent much of his career as a professor at Columbia University in New York. Read's work ''Classic American Graffiti'' is we ...

's ''Lexical Evidence from Folk Epigraphy in Western North America: A Glossarial Study of the Low Element in the English Vocabulary.'' The work describes and collates examples of graffiti observed by Reade on a road trip throughout the Western United States in 1928. It was privately published in Paris in 1935 since its description of bathroom

graffiti Graffiti (singular ''graffiti'', or ''graffito'' only in graffiti archeology) is writing or drawings made on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written "monikers" to elabor ...

was considered too racy for American publishers. It was eventually published in the United States in 1977, under the title ''Classic American Graffiti''. The work was described as a classic "model study" of latrinalia that "deserves the attention of any serious student of American language" in a 1979 review, which noted that even then it remained hard to access and "excessively rare." The late Alan Dundes, a folklorist at

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

, coined the term ''latrinalia'' in 1966 to refer to

found in restrooms. Dundes preferred it over the term ''shithouse poetry'', as not all latrinalia is in verse or poetic form. The word is derived from the

compounding In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of custom medications to fit unique needs of patients that cannot be met with mass-produced formulations. This may be done, for example, to provide medic ...

of ''latrine'' (or toilet) and the

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns and adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can ca ...

''-alia'', which signifies a collection of something — in this case bathroom writings.

Bibliography

*Joseph Gelfer, ''The Little Book of Toilet Graffiti'' *Jim Morrison, ''Privy Thoughts: Some Toilet Graffiti Found On University Bathroom Doors''

References

External links

From The Bathroom Wall - A blog about bathroom graffiti and other humorous topics OFFLINE 2 Sep 2022Latrinalia (e Bathroom Graffiti)
— Electronic Bathroom Graffiti uploads from around the world.
Bathroom Graffiti
— Bathroom Graffiti by author and photographer Mark Ferem
Bathroom Graffiti Project
— features and rates hundreds of photos of latrinalia from around the world
Latrinalia
— features galleries of bathroom graffiti *Raina Williams

''Department of Psychology,

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

'' *Mark Ferem
Latrinalia: "It's all in The Head"
''50mm Los Angeles'' *Matt Schneider
Stall Wall
an ethnography on latrinalia
Origins of Bathroom Graffiti Documentary

The Writing on the Stall
Graffiti and unauthorised signage Writing Toilets {{art-stub

Study and etymology

See also

Bibliography

References

External links