Word.ws English Dictionary

sesspool

sesspool is the archaic form of cesspool.

Meaning of cesspool

Noun

cesspool (plural cesspools)

  1. An underground pit where sewage is held.
    Synonyms:
    cesspit, gongpit
  2. (broadly, derogatory, figuratively) A filthy place.
    • Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.1887, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet”, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward, Lock & Co., part I (Being a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., […])...
    Synonyms:
    cesspit

Forms of sesspool

pluralsesspools

Origin of sesspool

From English dialect suss (“hogwash”), soss (“a dirty mess, a puddle”) + pool (“a puddle”). According to the OED, the first element is from earlier suspiral (“water pipe, setting tank”). Compare Goidelic ses (“a coarse mess”), English cess (“the boggy foreshore of a tidal river”).

Questions about sesspool

What is sesspool the archaic form of?
Sesspool is the archaic form of cesspool.

Words near sesspool in the dictionary

  1. sessionographies
  2. sessionography
  3. sessions
  4. Sessler
  5. Sesslers
  6. sesspool
  7. sesspools
  8. sessrumnir
  9. Sessrúmnir
  10. Sessums
  11. Sessumses

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sesspool (page history and authors); cesspool (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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Cite this entry: “sesspool.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sesspool. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.