Vomitorium

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, my name’s Lauren. I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

Well, hello, Lauren. Welcome to the program.

Hiya.

Hi, thanks. I’m great.

So I have a question about a word that my friend and I were having an argument about.

Okay.

And the word is vomitorium.

Vomitorium.

Yes. And I’m a theater person, and I remember in high school learning that it had to do with the space between audiences or something like that.

And he seemed to believe that it had to do something with Greeks or Romans purging themselves after a feast.

So I was just wondering if there was any truth to that.

Aha.

You mean a vomitorium is a place where people en masse would barf?

That’s what he thinks.

I don’t think so because I distinctly remember learning this word because it’s so, you know, out there.

Yeah, it’s kind of ear-catching, isn’t it?

Yeah, it is.

Well, yeah, Lauren, I mean, as much as I am delighting in the mental image of an ancient Roman real estate agent walking the family through a new villa or McVilla and saying,

Here’s the banquet room and over here we have your deluxe vomitorium where you and the children can go hurl between courses.

No, you’re going to have to tell your friend that we’re sorry, but but the Romans did not have a special place where you could go and throw up.

Not that they didn’t.

They did have a practice of, you know, they figured the more the merrier.

And so they would make room for more grapes and other things.

So they would vomit on a regular basis.

Many of them would at these big parties, but they didn’t have a special room for it.

I mean, gross.

Imagine designating a special room in your house for that.

Yeah, that would not be that great.

What would you do?

Just step out back to the loo then?

Go to the street in the gutter?

Yeah.

You know, just excuse yourself.

Say I have to go see a man about a chariot or something and then just go outside, I guess.

But no, you’re absolutely right, Lauren.

And you’ve had experience with theater, would you say?

-huh.

I happen to know people who work with building stadiums and they use this word as well.

In modern stadiums, right?

Yeah, modern.

Oh, I’m not that old, Grant.

But yeah, they used the vomitoriums in the original Roman Colosseum, which could empty itself of people very, very quickly.

I think, what, 50,000 people in 15 minutes or something, they could get them out because they had a lot of those vomitoriums or in Latin vomitoria.

And the idea was this sort of metaphor of architectural purging, I guess you would say.

But as I was saying, I know people these days who work with building stadiums, and they’ll say, where are we going to put the voms or the vomitoris?

But it’s about an outflow, just like vomiting from the mouth is about an outflow, right?

No, but that’s the etymological relationship there between vomit out of the mouth and a vomitorium as a place of mass exit.

Yes, exactly.

Well, it’s a great question.

Thanks for calling, Lauren.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

It could be worse. They could call it something worse than a vomitorium. But let’s not go there. Let’s go to your phone and call us 1-877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.