The water supply system of a district, town, city, or other place, including reservoirs, pipes, and pumps.
Used in a Sentence
waterworks
Definitions, parts of speech, synonyms, and sentence examples for waterworks.
Editorial note
Not teary eyes mind you; gushing waterworks at specific resolution points.
Examples10
Definitions4
Parts of speech1
Quick take
The water supply system of a district, town, city, or other place, including reservoirs, pipes, and pumps.
Meaning at a glance
The clearest senses and uses of waterworks gathered in one view.
(treated as singular) Any single facility, such as a filtration plant or pumping station, within such a system.
(figuratively) (informal) Rain.
Definitions
Core meanings and parts of speech for waterworks.
noun
The water supply system of a district, town, city, or other place, including reservoirs, pipes, and pumps.
noun
(treated as singular) Any single facility, such as a filtration plant or pumping station, within such a system.
noun
(figuratively) (informal) Rain.
noun
(figuratively) (British, euphemistic) The genitourinary system.
Example sentences
Not teary eyes mind you; gushing waterworks at specific resolution points.
The current government even tried to sell the waterworks.
> giving landowners farther upstream and closer to the waterworks greater ability to extract water This is not exactly correct.
I particularly liked the descriptions of the aquarius debugging the waterworks.
Formed to provide a clean water supply instead the owners took 95% of the $2 million to form a bank and created a system of waterworks that caused massive cholera outbreaks...
It's also worth noting that in a sense it's not even upgrading water infrastructure - if a large region has next to no waterworks to begin with, that makes this even more difficult.
> Osaka recorded more than 90 cases of water pipe leaks under its roads in the 2024 fiscal year, according to the city's waterworks bureau.
Quote examples
Original title "CBH Talk | Discussing Waterworks,” Stanley Greenberg’s Photographs of New York’s Hidden Water System" compressed to fit within title limits.
Distribution of water is governed by a system of "riparian rights" that (in brief) have an all-you-can-use first-come-first-served basis, giving landowners farther upstream and closer to the waterworks greater ability to extract water.
Proper noun examples
Published by Kris Graves Projects, with maps co-created by Larry Buchanan, this redux volume – Waterworks: The Hidden Water System of New York – comes at a moment when public thinking about water resources is increasingly complicated, and awareness of a system that has been continually under construction since the 1830s is heightened.
Frequently asked questions
Short answers drawn from the clearest meanings and examples for this word.
How do you use waterworks in a sentence?
Not teary eyes mind you; gushing waterworks at specific resolution points.
What does waterworks mean?
The water supply system of a district, town, city, or other place, including reservoirs, pipes, and pumps.
What part of speech is waterworks?
waterworks is commonly used as noun.