sewer

noun

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.”

2. (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.”

   “His nephew Charles, meanwhile, had grown up in the royal household, working as a sewer, or waiter.”

3. 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 goods.”

4. A small tortricid moth, the larva of which sews together the edges of a leaf using silk.

   “the apple-leaf sewer, Ancylis nubeculana”

verb

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