plumber
Part of speech: noun
verb
Morphological type: simple
Topics: medicine
sciences
Etymology: From Middle English plumber, from Old French plummier (French plombier); from Latin plumbārius, from plumbum (“lead or lead shot”).
The verb sense “to botch” is perhaps from the negative stereotype of the occupation.
Inflected forms:
form: plumber ]
pos: noun
tags: canonical
form: plumbers
pos: noun
tags: plural
form: plumbers
pos: verb
tags: present
singular
third-person
form: plumbering
pos: verb
tags: participle
present
form: plumbered
pos: verb
tags: participle
past
form: plumbered
pos: verb
tags: past
Senses:
gloss: One who works in or with lead.
pos: noun
tags: dated
gloss: One who furnishes, fits, and repairs pipes and other apparatus for the conveyance of water, gas, or drainage.
pos: noun
examples: Mario and Luigi's profession is plumbers.
Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green party councillor, was elected as the party’s first MP in northern England after overturning Labour’s 13,000-vote majority.
gloss: A person who investigates or prevents leaks of information.
pos: noun
examples: It involved the break-in of the office of Mr. Lewis Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, by the White House “plumbers.”
gloss: In the Royal Navy, an apprentice, a boy aged 16 to 18, who is trained in technical skills at the Dockyard Schools to become an artificer.
pos: noun
tags: UK
informal
gloss: A urologist.
pos: noun
tags: derogatory
slang
examples: […] began the month with an operation at St. Joseph Hospital in Aurora, Ill. His surgeon, by the way, was a "plumber” – urologist.
Within surgery, the "cleaner" specialties, such as cardiac and neurosurgery, outrank the plumbers (urologists) and proctologists.
gloss: To botch or ruin.
pos: verb
tags: US
slang
transitive
examples: There is nothing to work him into a fine feeling of agony and despair like an exam scheduled for the next day, or a paper to write, or a concert in which he is to sing. Wish him the top of the morning when he is looking forward to one of these events, and then hear the woeful story of how badly he is going to be plumbered.
And yet she sent back his letters unopened and crashed down the telephone receiver on him with monotonous regularity. Well, he guessed it was his own fault. He’d plumbered the works beyond repair that first day.
If it was not east of where I had started out, I had plumbered myself sure enough, because I didn’t have the energy to go back the other way.
gloss: To work as a plumber.
pos: verb
tags: informal
intransitive
rare
examples: Joe Staudinger plumbered so well that on Saturday night boiling water came from both hot and cold faucets.
Most of us were at the bottom end of the service industry, the ones who plastered or plumbered by day and painted or wrote at night.
[S]he cleaned rich people’s houses—did her work and saved her wages, and Clarence carpentered and plumbered[,] hauled stuff in the old red truck and Ernestine drove to work in a new Datsun.
gloss: To work on (something) as a plumber.
pos: verb
tags: informal
rare
transitive
examples: PIPES PLUMBERED BY US stay plumbered till they wear out. No leaky joints or splitting follow our work. How about the pipes on your steam or hot water heater? Don’t they need repacking or perhaps replacing? HAVE US LOOK AT THEM NOW.
Water shows up where no water ever was seen before as the underground water table riseth and runneth over. The surface of the world is a chocolate pudding plumbered by an untutored bride who failed to read the directions.
Except that is for the religious ritual of using the washing machine. (These ancient rites had been captured in the brain implant film known as Crease). The ceremony was so tiring, because of the lack of other muscle titillation, that it left the poor peoploids plum tuckered, so that workbots would have to come in to refold the articles of de-hydrated apparel, and somehow get the tucks plumbered, ready for the next service, usually conducted by a fanatical religious leader known as an Engineer.
gloss: To do, work, devise (something).
pos: verb
tags: rare
slang
transitive
examples: Q. [Mr. Goodman] At the period of time we have spoken of, that strike settled down, did it not, in 1910 and 1911, and there was no strike? A. [Fred C. Schanberger] No. Q. What happened to the Vaudeville Managers’ Co-operative Association’s activities at that time? A. Oh, they kind of plumbered it along and I think I never heard of it so far as I am concerned until this second strike was started.
The other afternoon Silly here pilfered a melody from the classics, threw a little jazz at it and I plumbered some words. I got a copy of them with me now. Grab this while it’s hot, Joe.
‘My idea!’ Was this bunch of deadwood trying to give him the birdies? ‘Dana—’ / ‘Suppose it was Dana's idea? You are the one that plumbered things.’ / ‘That's right, Duke,’ said Dana, neatly stepping out from under. ‘I merely made a suggestion, You did not have to follow it.’
gloss: To equip (something) with plumbing.
pos: verb
tags: informal
rare
transitive
examples: How many times should a bathroom be “plumbered”? IT should be “plumbered” once more if it is an old bathroom of the tin-tub, iron-pipe era. Call in your plumber and have him rip out the old, unsanitary fixtures and the rusting iron or steel pipe and put in modern fixtures connected with good brass pipe that cannot rust. If you are building a new house it should be “plumbered” just once.
The silver grey timbers he turned inside out or rather put the weathered side in, heated and plumbered the place and, with his freezing apparatus can live off his chickens, ducks and garden-produce all the year round.
For the most part, they let the land go, perforce; so that nowadays their ancestral mansions gleam spickly and spanly after having been purchased, and lavishly plumbered and electrified, by magnates from out of the North.
Related words: plumbing
Derived words: nonplumber
plumber block
plumberless
plumber's cleavage
plumber's crack
plumber's helper
plumber's snake
plumber wrench
plumbery
unplumbered
plumbered
plumber up
Translations: