TOILET  , the

process or operation of dressing, also dress and its appurtenances, also applied, especially in the French form " toilette," to a particular costume worn by a lady . The word is adapted from French toilette, a diminutive of toile, cloth, Latin Lela, web, woven cloth, from root of texere, to weave; this word survives in the English " toils," net, snare.' The earliest use of " toilet " and toilette is for a cloth, usually of linen or other fine material spread over a table when used to hold the looking-glass and all the other articles used in dressing, or for a small sheet or cloth thrown over the shoulders of a person while being shaved or having his or her hair dressed . It was thus applied especially to the various articles collectively which form the apparatus of a toilet-table or dressing-table . Dressing-tables or toilettes were articles of domestic furniture on which the 18th century cabinet makers and ebenistes of France lavished _their decorative art . The escritoire and toilette combined which belonged to Marie Antoinette is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington (see FURNITURE, Plate IV., fig . 4) . ' " Toil, " labour, fatigue, weariness, must of course be distinguished . The M . Eng. toilen appears to mean to pull, struggle, and is probably related to Scots toilyie, broil, and to Fr. touiller, to entangle, shuffle together, smear . It is, however, usually referred to " till," to cultivate, O . Eng. tiolian, from til, profitable, cf . Ger .

Ziel,

goal .