---
title: "Spend a penny" is an old British way to say use the toilet; public… — Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodil… · tree and pragmatics
description: "Spend a penny" is an old British way to say use the toilet; public toilets once cost a penny. Who acts: you, public toilets. A sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodily functions» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the prag
---

<!-- md -->
[Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/6-toilet-words/10/)

<!-- crumbs -->
[home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Euphemisms](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/) / [Soft words for hard things: the toilet…](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/6-toilet-words/) / 10

# Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodily functions, sentence 10

<!-- .ven lang=en -->
"Spend a penny" is an old British way to say use the toilet; public toilets once cost a penny.

<!-- .vintro -->
**Who acts:** you, public toilets · **What happens:** spend, be, say, use, cost · **To what, where:** penny, old British way, toilet · **Speech:** someone speaks here

<!-- .vabout -->
This is a sentence of the lesson «Soft words for hard things: the toilet and bodily functions» of the euphemisms course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (you, public toilets), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:euphemisms:006-toilet-words.lesson:10
# text = "Spend a penny" is an old British way to say use the toilet; public toilets once cost a penny.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = euphemisms
# lesson = 006-toilet-words.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1
1	"	"	PUNCT	``	_	2	punct	_	_
2	Spend	spend	VERB	VB	Mood=Imp|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
3	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	4	det	_	_
4	penny	penny	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	obj	_	Agree=R5-strong|Haiku=10:nsubj
5	"	"	PUNCT	''	_	2	punct	_	Agree=R6-punct-agree|Haiku=4:punct
6	is	be	AUX	VBZ	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Pres|VerbForm=Fin	10	cop	_	_
7	an	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
8	old	old	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
9	British	British	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	10	amod	_	_
10	way	way	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	2	ccomp	_	_
11	to	to	PART	TO	_	12	mark	_	_
12	say	say	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	10	acl	_	_
13	use	use	VERB	VB	VerbForm=Inf	12	ccomp	_	_
14	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	15	det	_	_
15	toilet	toilet	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	13	obj	_	_
16	;	;	PUNCT	:	_	20	punct	_	_
17	public	public	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	18	amod	_	_
18	toilets	toilet	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	nsubj	_	_
19	once	once	ADV	RB	_	20	advmod	_	_
20	cost	cost	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Plur|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	2	parataxis	_	_
21	a	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	22	det	_	_
22	penny	penny	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	20	obj	_	_
23	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	2	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- sa -->
- form: statement
- act: assert
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: changed form=decl, act=assert, voice=narrator

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **spend** *in a quote* | imperative | you *not said here* | a penny |  |  |  |  | vn consume-66-1 «NP V NP S\_ING»: agent=Agent penny=Asset clause=Goal |
| 2 | **is a** | present | you *not said here* | a old British way |  |  |  |  | tree rules |
| 3 | **say** *speech: assert* | to-infinitive | you *not said here* |  |  |  |  |  | vn say-37.7-1-1 «NP V that S»: agent=Agent clause=Topic |
| 4 | **use** | infinitive |  | the toilet |  |  |  |  | vn eat-39.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent toilet=Patient |
| 5 | **cost** | past | public toilets | a penny |  |  |  | once *property* | vn cost-54.2 «NP V NP.value»: agent=Theme penny=Value |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

<!-- div src -->

**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:euphemisms:006-toilet-words.lesson:10`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): R5-strong ×1, R6-punct-agree ×1. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

<!-- /div -->

<!-- pn -->
- ← previous: [Soft words for hard things: the toilet…, 9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/6-toilet-words/9/)
- next →: [Soft words for hard things: the toilet…, 11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/6-toilet-words/11/)
- ↑ back to [the lesson](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/euphemisms/6-toilet-words/)