The word 'cottage', usually meaning a small, cosy, countryside home, is documented as having been in use during the Victorian era to refer to a public toilet and by the 1960s its use in this sense had become an exclusively homosexual slang term. The term has its roots in self-contained English toilet blocks resembling small cottages in their appearance in the English cant language of Polari this became a double entendre by gay men referring to sexual encounters. The appearance of public lavatories, like this one in Pond Square, Camden, London, is the origin of the term cottaging.Ĭottaging is a gay slang term, originating from the United Kingdom, referring to anonymous sex between men in a public lavatory (a 'cottage', 'tea-room' ), or cruising for sexual partners with the intention of having sex elsewhere.
