Perhaps no word in English has undergone more transformations in its lifetime than toilet. Originally, in about 1540 it was a kind of cloth, a diminuitive form of toile, a word still used to describe a type of linen. Then it became a cloth for dressing tables. Then it became the items on the dressing table (whence toiletries). Then it became the dressing table itself, then the act of dressing, then the act of receiving visitors while dressing, then the dressing room itself, then any kind of private rom near a bedroom, then a room used lavatorially, and finally the lavatory itself. Which explains why ‘toilet water’ in English can describe something you would gladly daub on your face or, simultanously, ‘water in the toilet’.  –From Bill Bryson’s “At Home”