Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(gay) to frequent public lavatories, parks etc for sex; thus cottager, cottaging.

[1950		S. Potter Lifemanship 30: T. Driberg, noted Essex Lifeman, [...] has done a good deal of work on Counter Cottaging, a summary of which he has sent us] .
1960		G. Westwood A Minority 74: The homosexual who is proceeding from one lavatory to another in the hope of finding someone is said to be ‘cottaging’ .
1964		J. Gielgud letter 27 Dec. in Mangan John Gielgud’s Letters (2004) 318: [Going mad is] Less humiliating though, I suppose, than cottage-crawling!!
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 195: cottage (Brit gay sl) to loiter in washrooms ‘The dear was nicked for cottaging’.
1981		Burbridge & Walters Breaking the Silence 16: I knew about cottaging.
1982		P. Theroux London Embassy 151: Listen to the incurable cottager!
1988		A. Hollinghurst Swimming-Pool Library (1998) 18: You wouldn’t find a Viscount cottaging.
1992		O. Moore Matter of life and Sex 40: These same waiting, watching cottagers, David’s partners in the secret dances behind broken glass windows, among the soggy bogrolls.
1999		Observer Rev. 18 July 12: The pre-Wolfenden days, ‘when a policeman would chase a “cottaging” homosexual down a back alley’.
2000		Guardian G2 22 Feb. 5: The bishop [...] has a conviction for cottaging.
2004		J. McCourt ‘Vilja de Tanquay Exults’ in Queer Street 395: Cottage [..] Means a loo [...] and cottage-ing / means enterin’ said facility / For purposes other than urination.
2010		W. Ings ‘Trolling the Beat to Working the Soob’ in Int’l Jrnl Lexicog. 23:1 61: The bog trade refers to soliciting for sex in public toilets. It can be compared to Australia’s cruising the beats, the U.S. T-room trade and the English verb cottaging.
2015		(con. 1960s) M. Peppiatt Bacon in Your Blood 36: Back to your filthy urinal, Granny, back to your cottaging, and don’t show that cock-sucking face of yours here again.
2017		Guardian Online 6 Feb. 🌐 At the beginning [Hockney’s] art was a queering of British abstraction [...] a ticker tape of toilet graffiti, cottaging and sex in the shower.
2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 128: [C]atamites and cottagers, roamers and reamers.
2024		J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 715: ‘The Gent... wasn’t that the one with the moustache who was done for cottaging’.