plumber

From Middle English plumber, from Old French plummier (French plombier); from Latin plumbārius, from plumbum (“lead or lead shot”).

The verb sense “to botch” is perhaps from the negative stereotype of the occupation.^[1]

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈplʌm.ɚ/, Rhymes: -ʌmə(ɹ)
  • Homophone: Plummer

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (Indic) IPA^(key): /pləm(b)ə(r)/, Rhymes: -ʌmbə(ɹ)

plumber (plural plumbers)

1. (dated) One who works in or with lead.
2. One who furnishes, fits, and repairs pipes and other apparatus for the conveyance of water, gas, or drainage.
   1. One who installs piping for potable and waste water.
3. A person who investigates or prevents leaks of information.
   • 1979, United States. Congress. House. Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Subcommittee on Legislation, Espionage Laws and Leaks: Hearings Before the Subcommittee...:

     It involved the break-in of the office of Mr. Lewis Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, by the White House “plumbers.”

4. (British, informal) In the Royal Navy, an apprentice, a boy aged 16 to 18, who is trained in technical skills at the Dockyard Schools to become an artificer.
5. (slang, medicine, somewhat derogatory) A urologist.
   • 1958, Father Provincial Assumption B.V.M. Monastery, The Chronicle, volumes 12-13, page 39:

     […] began the month with an operation at St. Joseph Hospital in Aurora, Ill. His surgeon, by the way, was a "plumber” – urologist.

   • 1983, Toni Martin, How to Survive Medical School, page 127:

     Within surgery, the "cleaner" specialties, such as cardiac and neurosurgery, outrank the plumbers (urologists) and proctologists.

• plumbing

• → Irish: pluiméir
• → Welsh: plymer

plumber (third-person singular simple present plumbers, present participle plumbering, simple past and past participle plumbered)

1. (transitive, US, slang) To botch or ruin.

   Synonym: plumber up

   • 1930, “Paul Thomas Martin”, in Joseph W. Martin, editor, The Record, Haverford, Pa.: The Class of 1930, Haverford College, →OCLC, page 54:

     There is nothing to work him into a fine feeling of agony and despair like an exam scheduled for the next day, or a paper to write, or a concert in which he is to sing. Wish him the top of the morning when he is looking forward to one of these events, and then hear the woeful story of how badly he is going to be plumbered.

   • 1939 June 16, Edwin Rutt, “Four Blind Dates”, in The Kingston Daily Freeman, volume LXVIII, number 204, Kingston, N.Y.: Freeman Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 6, column 2:

     And yet she sent back his letters unopened and crashed down the telephone receiver on him with monotonous regularity. Well, he guessed it was his own fault. He’d plumbered the works beyond repair that first day.

   • 1993, James Dickey, To the White Sea (A Marc Jaffe Book), Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, page 226:

     If it was not east of where I had started out, I had plumbered myself sure enough, because I didn’t have the energy to go back the other way.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:plumber.
2. (intransitive, informal, rare) To work as a plumber.

   Synonym: plumb

   • 1939 November 28, “Nordenotes”, in Sierra Club Yodeler, volume 1, number 19, San Francisco, Calif.: San Francisco Bay Chapter, Sierra Club, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 5, column 1:

     Joe Staudinger plumbered so well that on Saturday night boiling water came from both hot and cold faucets.

   • 1995, John Yau, “A Little Memento from the Boys”, in Garrett Hongo, editor, Under Western Eyes: Personal Essays from Asian America, New York, N.Y.: Anchor Books/Doubleday, →ISBN, page 323:

     Most of us were at the bottom end of the service industry, the ones who plastered or plumbered by day and painted or wrote at night.

   • 1997, John Oliver Simon, “Fuchsia”, in Danielle La France, editor, Berkeley! A Literary Tribute, Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday Books, →ISBN, pages 219–220:

     [S]he cleaned rich people’s houses—did her work and saved her wages, and Clarence carpentered and plumbered[,] hauled stuff in the old red truck and Ernestine drove to work in a new Datsun.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:plumber.
3. (transitive, informal, rare) To work on (something) as a plumber.

   Synonym: plumber up

   • 1908 September 29, Deetz & Mullen, “Pipes Plumbered by Us”, in The Evening Times, city edition, volume XLIV, number 231, Cumberland, Md., →OCLC, page 7, column 7:

     PIPES PLUMBERED BY US stay plumbered till they wear out. No leaky joints or splitting follow our work. How about the pipes on your steam or hot water heater? Don’t they need repacking or perhaps replacing? HAVE US LOOK AT THEM NOW.

   • 1962 March 17, Truman Twill, “Mud in Your Eye”, in The Salem News, volume 74, number 66, Salem, Oh.: Brush-Moore Newspapers, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 4, column 6:

     Water shows up where no water ever was seen before as the underground water table riseth and runneth over. The surface of the world is a chocolate pudding plumbered by an untutored bride who failed to read the directions.

   • 1980, Colin Walsh, “Tales of Future Worlds: The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to Staying at Home”, in Colin Walsh’s Grown-Up’s Christmas Annual 1980, London: Pan Books, →ISBN, section 4, page 123:

     Except that is for the religious ritual of using the washing machine. (These ancient rites had been captured in the brain implant film known as Crease). The ceremony was so tiring, because of the lack of other muscle titillation, that it left the poor peoploids plum tuckered, so that workbots would have to come in to refold the articles of de-hydrated apparel, and somehow get the tucks plumbered, ready for the next service, usually conducted by a fanatical religious leader known as an Engineer.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:plumber.
4. (transitive, slang, rare) To do, work, devise (something).
   • 1919 October 15, “Federal Investigation”, in Variety, volume LVII, number 6, New York, N.Y.: Variety, published 2 January 1920, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 52, column 3:

     Q. [Mr. Goodman] At the period of time we have spoken of, that strike settled down, did it not, in 1910 and 1911, and there was no strike? A. [Fred C. Schanberger] No. Q. What happened to the Vaudeville Managers’ Co-operative Association’s activities at that time? A. Oh, they kind of plumbered it along and I think I never heard of it so far as I am concerned until this second strike was started.

   • 1925 February 7, C[arleton] S[tevens] Montanye, “Swan’s Song”, in The Popular Magazine, volume LXXV, number 2, New York, N.Y.: Street & Smith Corporation, →OCLC, page 77, column 1:

     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.

   • 1931 July 22, “Brother from Mu”, in W. J. Huntingford, editor, The Wainwright Star, volume XXIII, number 43, Wainwright, Alta.: W. J. Huntingford, →OCLC, page 3, column 6:

     ‘My idea!’ Was this bunch of deadwood trying to give him the birdies? ‘Dana—’ / ‘Suppose it was Dana's idea? You are the one that plumbered things.’ / ‘That's right, Duke,’ said Dana, neatly stepping out from under. ‘I merely made a suggestion, You did not have to follow it.’

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:plumber.
5. (transitive, informal, rare) To equip (something) with plumbing.

   Synonym: plumber up

   • 1928 July, Chase Brass & Copper Co., “Alpha Brass Pipe”, in Richardson Wright, editor, House & Garden, volume LIV, number 1, Greenwich, Conn.: Condé Nast Publications, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 117:

     How many times should a bathroom be “plumbered”? IT should be “plumbered” once more if it is an old bathroom of the tin-tub, iron-pipe era. Call in your plumber and have him rip out the old, unsanitary fixtures and the rusting iron or steel pipe and put in modern fixtures connected with good brass pipe that cannot rust. If you are building a new house it should be “plumbered” just once.

   • 1943 July, Oliver St. John Gogarty, letter to Martha Gogarty; quoted in J[ohn] B[enignus] Lyons, “There is a Happy Land . . .”, in Oliver St. John Gogarty: The Man of Many Talents: A Biography, Dublin: Blackwater, 1980, →ISBN, part 3, page 250:

     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.

   • 1947, James Branch Cabell, “The Prologue: Quiet Along the Potomac”, in Let Me Lie: Being in the Main an Ethnological Account of the Remarkable Commonwealth of Virginia and the Making of Its History, New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Company, →OCLC, section 4, page 11:

     For the most part, they let the land go, perforce; so that nowadays their ancestral mansions gleam spickly and spanly after having been purchased, and lavishly plumbered and electrified, by magnates from out of the North.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:plumber.

• Corpun.com, a specialized website on Corporal Punishments
• Harold Wentworth, Stuart Berg Flexner, compilers (1960), “plumb —er v.t.”, in Dictionary of American Slang, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, published May 1965, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 398, column 2.
• “plumber v.”, in Green’s Dictionary of Slang, Jonathon Green, 2016–present

• replumb

plumber

1. first-person singular present passive subjunctive of plumbō