the.com/towel rail
The reason your towel is damp and lukewarm instead of damp and cold.
means A wall-mounted bar or rack, sometimes heated, designed to hang towels on so they can dry and air out between uses.
from A plain compound of 'towel' (from Old French 'toaille', related to Germanic words for washing or wiping, ultimately tracing toward roots meaning 'to wash') and 'rail' (from Old French 'reille', a bar or rod, from Latin 'regula' meaning a straight stick or ruler — the same root that gives us 'regulate'). The heated version is a more modern addition, born of plumbing running alongside bathroom radiators, but the name itself is just honest carpentry: a rail, for your towel.
- origin
- Victorians invented it to dry linens, not bodies
- heated models
- often double as a room radiator
- bacteria fact
- a folded damp towel breeds more germs than hung
- energy cost
- left on constantly rivals a small fridge