My two year old adopted nephew must have had some bad experience while playing in the bubble bath because for two months straight he fought and resisted and cried whenever trying to convince him to get a bubble bath. His Grammy has been giving farmers baths with baby wipes this whole time.
Well today I (his favorite uncle) decided to try to convince him to once again get in the tub.
“Ooh stinky Ricky needs a bath, do you want to get one”
“No.”
"Awwh don’t you want to play with bubbles and draw on tub with crayons? What about TOYS? Do you want to play with uncle SmokeyDope while you take a baaath? Huuh?
His little mind takes a second to process the query
“mhm…”
“Oooh wooow! Alright let’s go play, let’s go PLAAY!”
incomprehensible shrieks of transcendent happiness “bye bye, bye bye, bye bye!”
He gets up and starts running to the stairs towards bathroom while gesturing me to follow. At this point Grammy and I are like “okay this is happening” so we got his little butt to finally willingly go for a bubble bath. I spent over half an hour playing with him like drawing on the tub, splashing him with water, making goofy noises that kind of thing.
This kind of thing is not really in my comfort zone I never gave him a bath before but im willing to try if it helps the situation. So today was a success but now were unsure whether he’s back on the regular grammy time bath routine or if playtime with uncle SmokeyDope is now a non-negotiable update in the terms and service agreements.
I don’t feel very good about myself most of the time so when I’m able to make change for the better in someone elses life or add even a little bit of positivity to a situation it makes me feel like im not wasting space. Today was a good day as uncle SmokeyDope :)
Aka a whore bath, a sink/basin bath, a wash-up, hittin the high spots, wiping up, etc.
There’s all kinds of variants on it. I spent twenty years bathing, or helping bathe, people. You’d be amazed at the variety of ways folks will build up terms for such minor tasks that are regular and repeated that “need” a distinction from a more common thing
Once the default form of bathing turned into tubs, it was inevitable that bathing via a basin or other container develop its own nomenclature. Same as it became inevitable that once showers became ubiquitous that you’d run into distinctions between that and a tub bath.
Since the oldest form of bathing inside a house or structure was the one that lingered most in rural areas where indoor running water was last to appear, farmers were one of the last groups to take that kind of bath daily. So that’s the terminology that stuck in places where that was a factor.
However, the term “whore bath” preceded it by a good margin, going back to somewhere in the 1800s iirc. Since prostitutes got sweaty and sticky multiple times a day, the need for a quick bath of the “important” parts was a bit of a meme. When the daily bath for everyone started switching to tubs post piped water, the term got expanded into the fuller basin bathing methods that were used daily.
Mind you, daily bathing practices varied a lot everywhere. Some places and times, people might default to the bare minimum of hands, face, crotch, and ass. Sometimes not even all of that. I can’t recall the sect, but there was a religious group back in the 1700s that considered washing anything but the face, feet, and hands sinful.
The typical actual bath by farmers was fairly complete though. The more common farmer’s bath was often referring to the quick wash up they’d do while coming to a meal or otherwise taking a break. Hands, face, sometimes some water poured over the head, and more rarely an extra scrub at the pits. Again, the exact methods would vary a lot.
Talking to older folks from before running water was a thing was always interesting. We tend to forget how damn amazing it is that we can just turn a knob and get water. It’s something that has never been common everywhere. And, it hasn’t been so widespread before the last half of the last century. There’s still places all around the world where it isn’t even reliable in some cities, and many rural places don’t have it at all.
So you still run into a lot of farmers worldwide where a daily bath is a rag and a container of water.
I didn’t think I was going to read a well written five paragraph essay deep dive on the nature of bathing slang across culture from an expert in the field today. Well, here we are. Thanks for the great response southsamurai!