Jacks
The toilet, especially a public one. Always plural - 'the jacks' or 'the jacks is broken'. The everyday Hiberno-English word for the loo, used freely in conversation where 'toilet' would feel formal.
Etymology
From the older English form 'jakes' (a latrine or privy), attested from the sixteenth century. The 'jakes' form comes from Middle English 'Jake' or 'Jakke', variants of 'Jack' / 'Jacques' used as a generic name. The OED traces 'jakes' to at least 1530; Shakespeare uses it in 'King Lear' (c. 1605) in Kent's threat to the steward: 'I will tread this unbolted villain into mortar and daub the walls of a jakes with him.' The modern 'jacks' is the plural-of-respect variant; the singular 'jack' is rare in current Irish English.
In a sentence
"Where's the jacks? - back of the bar, past the dartboard."
Historical notes
Jacks has fallen out of mainstream English use (where 'jakes' is now archaic and 'jacks' is rarely understood without context) but kept its place in Hiberno-English. The word is class- and age-portable: heard in pubs, building sites, schools, offices, and everywhere a euphemism is wanted. It survives in Irish English while the original 'jakes' has faded almost everywhere else - a small Hiberno-English act of preservation.
Sources
- Oxford English Dictionary, entry jakes n. (and modern variant jacks). · dictionary
- Shakespeare, William. King Lear, c. 1605 (First Folio 1623), Act II Scene II. · academic