Word.ws English Dictionary

sewer

Syllables: sew·er/ˈs(j)uːə//ˈsuɚ/

sewer noun: a pipe or channel, or system of pipes or channels, used to remove human waste and to provide drainage.

sewer: a pipe or channel, or system of pipes or channels, used to remove human waste and to provide...
Image: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun (1)

sewer (plural sewers)

  1. A pipe or channel, or system of pipes or channels, used to remove human waste and to provide drainage.
    • There was a blockage in the sewer after an item of clothing was flushed down the toilet.
    • One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains. Isolating a city’s effluent and shipping it away in underground sewers has probably saved more lives than any medical procedure except vaccination.2014 June 14, “It’s a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891, London: The Economist Group, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 12 Jun 2014

Verb

sewer (third-person singular simple present sewers, present participle sewering, simple past and past participle sewered)

  1. (transitive) To provide (a place) with a system of sewers.

Noun (2)

sewer (plural sewers)

  1. (historical) An official in charge of a princely household, also responsible for the ceremonial task of attending at dinners, seating the guests and serving dishes.
    • While the Saxon was plunged in these painful reflections, the door of their prison opened, and gave entrance to a sewer, holding his white rod of office.1819 December 20 (indicated as 1820), Walter Scott, chapter VII, in Ivanhoe; a Romance. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC, pages...
    • His nephew Charles, meanwhile, had grown up in the royal household, working as a sewer, or waiter.2011, Thomas Penn, Winter King, Penguin, published 2012, page 287

Noun (3)

UK/ˈsəʊə/US/ˈsoʊɚ/

sewer (plural sewers)

  1. One who sews.
    • Up under the roof three men are making boys’ jackets at twenty cents a piece, of which the sewer takes eight, the ironer three, the finisher five cents, and the buttonhole-maker two and a quarter, leaving a cent and three-quarters to pay for the drumming up, the fetching and bringing back of the...1890, Jacob A[ugust] Riis, “The Sweaters of Jewtown”, in How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC, pages 131–132
  2. A small tortricid moth, the larva of which sews together the edges of a leaf using silk.
    • the apple-leaf sewer, Ancylis nubeculana

sewer meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali

sewer in Hindi

सीवर

sewer in Tamil

pipes used to remove human waste and to provide drainage
சாக்கடை cākkaṭai

sewer in Urdu

sewer, gutter
نالی nālī

sewer in Bengali

a sewer, sewage pipe
প্রণালী pronali
More languagesFewer languages
sewer in Malayalam
ഭൂഗർക്കുഴൽ, ഓട, ഓവുചാൽ
sewer in Kannada
ಹೊಲಸು ನೀರನ್ನು ಸಾಗಿಸುವ ಕಾಲುವೆ, ಒಳಚರಂಡಿ, ಕೊಳಾಯಿ, ಮೋರಿ
sewer in Punjabi
ਸੀਵਰ
sewer in Nepali
सिवर
sewer in Tagalog
alkantarilya
sewer in Arabic
بَالُوعَة bālūʕa, خَيَّاط ḵayyāṭ
sewer in Indonesian
selokan, got
sewer in Vietnamese
cống

Examples of sewer in a sentence

  • The sewer burst, and a tide of sewage poured into nearby properties.
  • There was a blockage in the sewer, so we called out the plumber.
  • Recycled sewer water is opposed by many sanitation agencies due to the yuck factor.

All 40 example sentences with sewer

Synonyms of sewer

All synonyms of sewer

Forms of sewer

Noun
pluralsewers
Verb
third-person singular presentsewers
present participlesewering
past participlesewered
pastsewered

Plural of sewer: sewers

Origin of sewer

From Middle English sewer, seuer, from Anglo-Norman sewere (“water-course”), from Old French sewiere (“overflow channel for a fishpond”), from Vulgar Latin *exaquāria (“drain for carrying water off”), from Latin ex (“out of, from”) + aquāria (“of or pertaining to waters”) or from a root *exaquāre.

From Middle English seware, seuere, from Anglo-Norman asseour, from Old French asseoir (“find a seat for”), from Latin assidēre, present active infinitive of assideō (“attend to”), from ad (“to, towards, at”) + sedeō (“sit”).

sew + -er

Words formed from sewer

Phrases with sewer

Words that rhyme with sewer

4 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sewer

What does sewer mean?
Sewer means a pipe or channel, or system of pipes or channels, used to remove human waste and to provide drainage.
What is sewer in Hindi?
Sewer in Hindi is सीवर. See Sewer meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is sewer?
Sewer can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sewer?
Sewer is pronounced /ˈs(j)uːə/ (UK).
What is the plural of sewer?
The plural of sewer is sewers.

Words near sewer in the dictionary

  1. sewellel
  2. sewellels
  3. sewels
  4. sewen
  5. sewens
  6. sewer
  7. sewer flies
  8. sewer fly
  9. sewer gas
  10. sewer rat
  11. sewer rats

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sewer (page history and authors); sewer (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); نالی (Urdu) (page history and authors); প্রণালী (Bengali) (page history and authors); sewer (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sewer (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); sewer (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sewer (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: en-uk-sewer.ogg, en-us-sewer.ogg, en-au-sewer.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sewer.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sewer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.