Word.ws English Dictionary

common sewer

common sewer noun: a communal session of drinking alcohol.

Noun

common sewer (plural common sewers)

  1. (UK, archaic, slang) A communal session of drinking alcohol.
    • When men go into a 'sluicery' for a 'sensation,' a 'drain,' or a 'common sewer,' they call the glass of gin they seek, in allusion to the juniper, a 'nipper,' or, more briefly, a 'nip,' occasionally a 'bite,' and not unfrequently it turns out a 'flogger.'1869, Meliora, volume 12, page 47

Forms of common sewer

pluralcommon sewers

Origin of common sewer

A punning allusion to shared drains for sewage. Compare drain (“a drink”).

Questions about common sewer

What does common sewer mean?
Common sewer means a communal session of drinking alcohol.
What part of speech is common sewer?
Common sewer is a noun.
What is the plural of common sewer?
The plural of common sewer is common sewers.

Words near common sewer in the dictionary

  1. common sedge
  2. common sedges
  3. common sense
  4. common sense is neither common nor sensical
  5. Common Sense Revolution
  6. common sewer
  7. common sewers
  8. common shelduck
  9. common shelducks
  10. common shrew
  11. common shrews

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: common sewer (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-common sewer.wav.

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