LAVATION: the act or an instance of washing or cleansing.
Performing a "lavation" in a "lavatory" seems logical, doesn't it? And rightly so. Both words come from the Latin lavare, meaning "to wash." English picked up a few other words from this root as well. In medicine, the therapeutic washing out of an organ is "lavage." There is also "lavabo" (in Latin, literally "I shall wash"), which in English can refer to a ceremony at Mass in which celebrants wash their hands, to the basin used in this religious ceremony, or to other kinds of basins. Even the word "lavish," via a Middle French word for a downpour or rain, comes to us from lavare.
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