Bathing is the washing of the body with a fluid, usually water or an aqueous solution, or the immersion of the body in water. It may be practised for personal hygiene, religious ritual or therapeutic purposes or as a recreational activity.
Bathing can take place in any situation where there is water, ranging from warm to cold. It can take place in a bathtub or shower, or it can be in a river, lake, water hole, pool or the sea, or any other water receptacle. The term for the act can vary. For example, a ritual religious bath is sometimes referred to as immersion, the use of water for therapeutic purposes can be called water treatment or hydrotherapy, and two recreational water activities are known as swimming and paddling. The city of Bath (known during ancient Roman times as Aquae Sulis) is famous for its public baths fed by hydrothermal springs.
Read more about Bathing: Purpose, Types of Baths, Clothing, Bathing Babies, Western History, Art Motif
Famous quotes containing the word bathing:
“Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,”
—Amy Lowell (1874–1925)
““... Can poet’s thought
That springs from body and in body falls
Like this pure jet, now lost amid blue sky,
Now bathing lily leaf and fish’s scale,
Be mimicry?””
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“I know, you have forgotten those June nights on the Riviera, where we sat ‘neath the shimmering skies, moonlight bathing in the Mediterranean! We were young, gay, reckless! The night I drank champagne from your slipper—two quarts. It would have held more, but you were wearing inner soles!”
—Irving Brecher, U.S. screenwriter, and Edward Buzzell. J. Cheever Loophole (Groucho Marx)