Bidet is a word that has managed to be simultaneously ubiquitous in some cultures and virtually taboo in others, a disparity driven less by the object's usefulness than by the word's associations and the cultural discomfort it provokes.
The French word bidet originally meant a small horse or pony. Its deeper etymology is uncertain—it may derive from Old French bider (to trot), though this connection is not firmly established. The application of the word to a bathroom fixture dates to the early 18th century and is based on the posture of use: the user straddles the low basin in a position resembling that of sitting on a small horse.
The earliest known reference to a bidet as a bathroom fixture appears in a 1710 inventory of the belongings of the Marquis de Argenson, a French government official. The device described was not the plumbed-in fixture we know today but a portable basin set on a low wooden stand, kept in the bedroom or dressing room. The bidet was initially a piece of bedroom furniture, not bathroom furniture—indoor plumbing was centuries away for most households.
The bidet became standard in French aristocratic households during the 18th century. Accounts of the period mention bidets in the residences of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour, and Marie Antoinette. Napoleon reportedly owned a silver bidet. The device was associated with refined hygiene and aristocratic luxury.
From France, the bidet spread to other European countries, particularly Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, where it became a standard bathroom fixture. In many European countries, building codes require a bidet in residential bathrooms. In Japan, the electronic bidet toilet seat (washlet), pioneered by the company TOTO in 1980, has made bidet functionality nearly universal in Japanese homes.
The bidet's absence from North American bathrooms is one of the most frequently discussed cultural differences between the United States and Europe. Several explanations have been proposed. The most commonly cited is that American soldiers first encountered bidets in European brothels during World War II, creating an association between the fixture and prostitution that persisted long after the war. This association, combined with American puritanical attitudes toward hygiene of the genital area
Other factors contributed to the American bidet gap. American bathrooms were typically smaller than European ones, leaving no room for an additional fixture. American plumbing standards and building codes did not accommodate bidets. And the market dynamics of the American bathroom fixture industry never created the supply that might have
The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 changed the conversation dramatically. When toilet paper shortages swept the United States, bidet sales skyrocketed. Bidet attachment devices (which connect to existing toilets) and electronic bidet seats became mainstream products, and the cultural resistance that had kept bidets out of American homes for generations began to erode.
The word bidet retains its French pronunciation in English (/bɪˈdeɪ/), which contributes to its slightly exotic, faintly embarrassing quality in American English. Words that require non-English pronunciation often carry a sense of foreignness that can be either appealing (as with words like café or fiancée) or distancing (as with bidet). The word's pronunciation may thus have contributed to the cultural resistance to the object it names.