Mains

How to spell mains

5 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce mains

What does mains mean?

1. nounThe public supply of electricity, gas, or water delivered to a building, or the network that carries it.
2. nounThe principal pipes or cables in a distribution system, as opposed to the smaller branches.

Mains in a sentence

• The heater plugs straight into the mains rather than running on batteries.

• The council replaced the ageing sewer mains under the high street.

• A burst pipe cut off the water mains to the whole street.

• Electrical mains run beneath the pavement to each property.

Where does mains come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word grows from the Old English mægen, meaning 'strength, power, or force', a thoroughly Germanic root shared with words for might in the older northern languages. Over the medieval period 'main' came to mean 'principal' or 'chief', the largest and most important channel in a system, which is why we still speak of a water main or a gas main as the master pipe that feeds the smaller ones. When household electricity, gas, and water became piped public utilities in the nineteenth century, the plural 'mains' was adopted for the central supply network that reaches a building, and in British usage it settled into a collective noun for 'the public supply' itself. The spelling simply stacks the everyday adjective 'main' with a plural -s, so the trap is less the letters than the homophones: 'mains' sounds exactly like 'manes' (the hair on horses' necks) and like the place name spelled Maine's, and only context tells writers which they want.

How the word is built

• main (chief, principal; from Old English mægen 'strength, power')
• -s (plural/collective)