I’m checking a bit for quotes that antedate OED’s, I happen to be working on the pomander-through-prajnaparamita section of the alphabet, which of course includes potty and related words. How interesting that in that group I stumbled across no less than three interesting, unrelated tidbits.

One was the interesting turn of phrase that antedates OED’s earliest cite for potty. Time Magazine (April 15, 1940) relates highbrows discussing the lowbrow: a long-titled researcher (Director, Normal Child Development Study, Department of Pediatrics, Columbia University) reports to the American Psychological Association – about toilet-training research.

Attempting to toilet-train two sets of male twins, she found that when very young, one member of each set reacted positively when put on the chamber …. But as they grew older they lost their response. Only … when they began to listen to the sound of water, play in the puddles they made, did the two definitely recognize the purpose of the potty. After another lapse, performance became stabilized.

During all this time the other two boys had been left to shift for themselves. When they were old enough to grasp what was happening their training began. In a short time their performances not only equaled, but in one case even surpassed, those of their more tutored brothers.

“to grasp what was happening” – Interesting phrase there. One wonders why why the researcher (or the article-writer) made a point of specifying male twins.