plumber
Pluralplumbers
Verbplumbers, plumbering, plumbered
Pluralplumbers
Formsplumbers, plumbering, plumbered
- 1A tradesperson who supplies, fits, and repairs the pipes and fixtures that carry water, gas, or drainage.
After the storm flooded the cellar, they hired a plumber to replace the damaged piping.
Every new building needs a licensed plumber to connect its supply and drainage lines.
- 2A tradesperson who installs the piping for drinking water and the lines that remove wastewater.
The contractor brought in a plumber to lay the supply and waste lines before the walls went up.
Our plumber connected the bathroom to both the freshwater main and the sewer.
- 3A person tasked with investigating or preventing the leaking of confidential information from an organization.
After the memo appeared in the press, the agency brought in a plumber to trace the source.
The administration's plumber spent months hunting down the official feeding documents to journalists.
Note
A metaphor taken straight from the trade: someone who stops leaks in pipes becomes someone who stops leaks of secrets. Its best-known bearers are the White House "plumbers," the team behind the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. The word still carries that association, and it tends to appear in the plural as the nickname of a covert unit rather than as a job title.
- 4To earn one's living by fitting and repairing pipes and drainage systems.
After his apprenticeship, he chose to plumber rather than join the factory.
Joe Staudinger plumbered so well that on Saturday night boiling water came from both hot and cold faucets.
1939, “Nordenotes”, in Sierra Club YodelerNote
A rare verb made straight from the noun, and it tends to turn up in a list of trades. People "plastered or plumbered by day," or someone "carpentered and plumbered" for a living. Used this way it takes no object. The shorter verb plumb does the same job, while plumbered keeps a casual, slightly playful ring.
- 5To carry out pipe-fitting and repair work on a particular building or system.
A local firm agreed to plumber the new clinic at cost.
He spent the summer plumbering rental units across town.
Similarplumb
Note
The transitive partner of the plain trade verb, most at home as a past participle. Deetz & Mullen's 1908 advertisement promised that "pipes plumbered by us stay plumbered till they wear out." By 1962 Truman Twill could stretch it to a muddy world compared to a pudding "plumbered by an untutored bride," meaning badly put together. Plumber up is the phrasal equivalent.
- 6To provide a building or space with the piping and fixtures for water supply and drainage.
Crews must plumber each apartment before the inspectors arrive.
The silver grey timbers he turned inside out or rather put the weathered side in, heated and plumbered the place and, with his freezing apparatus can live off his chickens, ducks and garden-produce all the year round.
1943, Oliver St. John Gogarty, letter to Martha Gogarty; quoted in J[ohn] B[enignus] LyonsNote
The trade's name pressed into service as a verb, with regular endings: plumbered, plumbering. It turns up mostly as a past participle, paired with other utilities: a house heated and plumbered, or mansions "lavishly plumbered and electrified" in James Branch Cabell's Let Me Lie (1947). It is rare and playful. Plumber up means the same, and in neutral writing "fitted with plumbing" is the safer choice.
- 7To spoil or completely ruin something, typically through clumsy or careless handling.
One careless edit can plumber an entire manuscript.
He plumbered the negotiation by losing his temper at the wrong moment.
Similarruin, spoil, botch, wreck, bungle
Note
A US slang verb whose likely origin is a jab at the trade itself: the plumber who leaves things worse than he found them. It takes an object, often a sweeping one, as in "plumbered the works beyond repair." James Dickey's To the White Sea (1993) uses it reflexively: "I had plumbered myself." The past form is plumbered, and plumber up means the same thing.
- 8A derisive, jocular nickname for a urologist, the physician who treats the urinary tract and male reproductive system.
He grumbled that the plumber kept him waiting an hour before the bladder scan.
Every man over fifty in the practice ended up referred to the plumber sooner or later.
Similarurologist
Note
Hospital slang, and not a kind one: it reduces the urologist's work to pipework. Toni Martin's How to Survive Medical School (1983) ranks "the plumbers" below the "cleaner" specialties such as cardiac surgery and neurosurgery, and that pecking order is the joke behind the word. It belongs in talk among colleagues. With a patient, or anywhere in writing, the safe word is urologist.
- 9To work out, contrive, or put together something, often by ingenious effort.
The crew tried to plumber some scheme that would keep them all paid.
The other afternoon Silly here pilfered a melody from the classics, threw a little jazz at it and I plumbered some words. I got a copy of them with me now. Grab this while it’s hot, Joe.
1925, C[arleton] S[tevens] Montanye, “Swan’s Song”Similarcontrive, concoct, devise, engineer, rig
Note
A rare slang stretch of the trade verb, in which devising something is pictured as fitting pieces together. In C. S. Montanye's "Swan's Song" (1925), a songwriter takes a melody pilfered from the classics and says "I plumbered some words" for it. In "Brother from Mu" (1931), a man is told he is "the one that plumbered things," meaning the one who arranged them. It reads now as period slang.
- 10In the Royal Navy, a young apprentice aged sixteen to eighteen trained in technical skills at the Dockyard Schools to become an artificer.
By eighteen, the plumber had finished his training and qualified as an artificer.
The dockyard enrolled a fresh intake of plumbers each September.
Similarapprentice
Less common meaning
- 11A craftsman who works with lead, especially in shaping, beating, or soldering it into roofs, gutters, and seams.
The cathedral's plumber recast the lead flashing around the spire each generation.
Guild masters trained each plumber to beat and solder lead into watertight seams.
Note
The trade's first meaning, and the one the spelling still remembers: Latin plumbum, "lead," by way of Old French plummier and Middle English plumber. A plumber was a worker in lead, and because early pipework was cast in lead, the name passed to the pipe-fitting trade. Today the older sense sounds dated. In current prose it needs context, such as roof flashing or soldered lead seams, to be understood.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of plumber apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
It comes from Middle English plumber, from Old French plummier (modern French plombier), from Latin plumbārius, from plumbum meaning "lead." The verb sense "to botch" is perhaps from the negative stereotype of the occupation.