Word of the Day: Vomitory

Okay, so I have to admit I had a Beavis and Butthead moment when I saw this on my way off the court at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. ("Huh-huh, it says vomit, huh-huh") It struck me as funny enough to take a picture of, at least, so i decided to look it up an see if it really had anything to do with vomit. So here is the definition, according to the American Heritage Dictionary:

vom·i·to·ry (vŏm'ĭ-tôr'ē, -tōr'ē)
adj. Inducing vomiting; vomitive.

n. pl. vom·i·to·ries
1. Something that induces vomiting.
2. An aperture through which matter is discharged.
3. One of the tunnellike passages of an amphitheater or stadium between the seats and the outside wall or passageway.

Okay, so number three is what it actually was, but notice that number one actually has to do with vomit. Which brought to mind a tidbit from ancient history class about a vomitorium being a place for people to vomit, more specifically, the passageways of the Colosseum being a place for people to puke after watching some poor Christian be mauled to death by a lion. I won't really blame my Roman history teacher, because I can't really remember where I heard it, but I can put that misconception to rest.
Here is the entry from Wikipedia:

A vomitorium (plural: vomitoria) is a passage situated below or behind a tier of seats in an amphitheatre, through which crowds can "spew out" at the end of a performance.
Despite their association with Ancient Rome, vomitoria are still found in some theatres. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, for instance, has vomitoria in two of its theatres, the outdoor Elizabethan Stage and the Angus Bowmer Theatre. The voms, as they are called, allow actors to mount the stage from passageways cut into the amphitheatre. The Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota has two permanent voms, one at stage left and one at stage right, of its thrust stage. The Circle in the Square Theatre, designed to reflect the theatres of ancient Greece and Rome, is the only Broadway theatre that has a vomitorium. The Vomitorium is still used in many of their productions as an entrance and exit for the actors.
A commonly held, but false, belief is that Ancient Romans designated spaces called vomitoria for the purpose of actual vomiting, as part of a binge and purge cycle.

I also found another article debunking this at straightdope.com. You can read it at the link, but basically it says Romans were no strangers to blowing chunks, but didn't have special rooms for this purpose. The rich, however, had servants to clean it up. I have to say that would have been really nice when the boys were babies!