Cottaging

Cottaging is British gay slang for anonymous sexual encounters between men in public toilets, which were nicknamed cottages. The term dates from an era when homosexuality was criminalized in the United Kingdom and few safe spaces existed for gay men to meet. Like cruising, it functioned as coded language within a hidden subculture. Cottaging carries a heavy history: the same toilets that offered contact also became sites of police entrapment and prosecution, and several public figures were arrested this way. The rise of dating apps and more accepting social spaces has reduced its prevalence, though the term endures in British queer vocabulary and cultural memory.