toilet soap
- noun
- /ˈtɔɪlɪt soʊp/
- Archaic
:
jabón de tocador
- He always keeps a bar of toilet soap in his bathroom for personal hygiene.
Examples
-
It's some special toilet soap, from Bond street.
-
They would use cloth diapers, and they would wash them with their own hands, lovingly, with toilet soap.
Fiction book (1996) -
You should choose a gentle toilet soap to avoid irritating your skin.
-
Many brands of toilet soap include moisturizing ingredients to help keep your skin soft.
Synonyms
1
4.9
A hard mild soap made from olive oil
1
1.0
A bar of soap you use to wash your body in a bath or shower
1
1.6
A mild product used to wash the skin on your face
How Mild
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a mild soap for personal washing' is compositionally related to 'toilet' (washing/dressing) + 'soap', so the sense can be partly inferred from the parts. However, the relevant sense of 'toilet' is somewhat archaic and the phrase is dated in contemporary usage, so a B1 learner who only knows the common modern sense of 'toilet' (restroom) may not fully predict the intended hygiene/soap meaning.
Etymology
The name toilet soap comes from an older meaning of toilet, which meant washing and getting ready rather than the modern bathroom. So toilet soap was soap for 'personal washing', not for clothes or floors, and that is why the term means a mild soap for the body today.