Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use cistern in a sentence

11 example sentences · noun

Cistern means a reservoir or tank for holding water, especially for catching and holding rainwater for later use. Example: “We backfilled the cistern with pea gravel to discourage its use as a refuse container.”

Examples of cistern by meaning

nounA reservoir or tank for holding water, especially for catching and holding rainwater for later use.

  • Higher up was a cistern and a few more terraces.1989, Octavia E. Butler, “Part III, Chapter 7”, in Imago, page 211
  • Cisterns (bôr, bō'r), mentioned frequently in the Bible, are artificial reservoirs, usually cut into bedrock, for collecting and conserving rain runoff from roofs and courtyards.2001, Philip J. King, Lawrence E. Stager, chapter 3, in Life in Biblical Israel, →ISBN, page 126

More sentences with cistern

  • We backfilled the cistern with pea gravel to discourage its use as a refuse container.From the entry backfill
  • The cistern was fitted with washouts and air-valves.From the entry washout
  • The oldest Lark spaghettied down to a noodle and slithered through the letterbox-like hole at the bottom of the cistern.2022 August 30, Thomas Sanders, Samuel Sanders, “Little K, Fire ’Er Up!”, in The Companionship in A Case of OCD, [United Kingdom]: Sanders…. From the entry spaghetti
  • He also owns the only backhoe tractor on Elbow Cay, so whenever anyone needs a cistern dug, he's their man.2012, The Island Caper: A Jake Lafferty Action Novel, →ISBN, page 34. From the entry man
  • “One of the reasons I bought the house was that it had more cisterns than any other building in town.Architectural Digest v.57, p.274, Condé Nast (2000). From the entry Patmiot
  • That is precisely where so many of us are-trapped in our own cisterns, stuck in a gloryless life and a gloryless church.2010, John Avant, The Passion Promise. From the entry gloriless
  • On Patmos, cisterns represent real wealth.Architectural Digest v.57, p.274, Condé Nast (2000). From the entry Patmiot
  • Inside the typically long, narrow bleaching crofts were cisterns for bleaching cotton yarn, now represented by sunken stone tanks, and sealed vats called ‘kiers’ for bleaching cloth.2007, Sarah Tarlow, The Archaeology of Improvement in Britain, 1750-1850, Cambridge University Press, page 166. From the entry kier
  • One was for well water and one was a cistern pump—water from the former was hard and clear, from the cistern it was brownish and soft.1942, Emily Carr, “Waterworks”, in The Book of Small, Toronto, Ont.: Oxford University Press, →OCLC. From the entry brownish

Meaning of cistern

  1. noun A reservoir or tank for holding water, especially for catching and holding rainwater for later use.
  2. noun In a flush toilet, the container in which the water used for flushing is held; a toilet tank.
  3. noun A shallow, typically oval, vessel made of porcelain, pottery, or glass.

Full definition of cistern

Questions about cistern in a sentence

How do you use cistern in a sentence?
Cistern is used as a noun. For example: “We backfilled the cistern with pea gravel to discourage its use as a refuse container.”
What is a short sentence with cistern?
“On Patmos, cisterns represent real wealth.”
What does cistern mean?
Cistern means a reservoir or tank for holding water, especially for catching and holding rainwater for later use.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cistern (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use cistern in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/cistern. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.