sewers

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.

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...

Noun (3)

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

   Synonyms:

   sempster, sempstress, seamster, seamstress, tailor, sewist

2. A small tortricid moth, the larva of which sews together the edges of a leaf using silk.
   • the apple-leaf sewer, Ancylis nubeculana

See all 5 meanings of sewer