Plumber

How to spell plumber

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce plumber

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does plumber mean?

1. nounA tradesperson who installs and repairs water pipes, drains, and related fittings.

Plumber in a sentence

• The plumber replaced the leaking valve under the kitchen sink.

• We called a plumber when the radiator started dripping overnight.

Where does plumber come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin plumbum, which simply meant 'lead', the soft heavy metal. In ancient Rome, water pipes and seals were commonly made from lead, so anyone who worked with the metal became a plumbarius, a 'worker in lead'. English took the term in through Old French as plommier or plumbier during the medieval period, and over time it settled into the modern spelling and the modern job of fitting and repairing water pipes, which today rarely involve lead at all. The same plumbum root explains the chemical symbol Pb for lead, and it also gives us 'plumb line', the lead weight that hangs straight down. The silent 'b' that catches so many writers is a direct fossil of that Latin plumbum, preserved in the spelling long after it stopped being pronounced.

How the word is built

• plumb (from Latin plumbum: lead)
• -er (agent suffix, one who works with)