plumbernoun/ˈplʌm.ə/

• 1

  datedOne 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.

  • Mario and Luigi's profession is plumbers.
  • Hannah Spencer, a local plumber and Green party councillor, was elected as the party’s first MP in northern England after overturning Labour’s 13,000-vote majority.
• 3

  A person who investigates or prevents leaks of information.

  • It involved the break-in of the office of Mr. Lewis Fielding, Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, by the White House “plumbers.”
• 4

  informalIn 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

  derogatoryslangmedicinesciencesA urologist.

  • […] began the month with an operation at St. Joseph Hospital in Aurora, Ill. His surgeon, by the way, was a "plumber” – urologist.
  • Within surgery, the "cleaner" specialties, such as cardiac and neurosurgery, outrank the plumbers (urologists) and proctologists.

plumberverb/ˈplʌm.ə/

• 1

  slangTo botch or ruin.

  • 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.
  • 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.
• 2

  rareinformalTo work as a plumber.

  • Joe Staudinger plumbered so well that on Saturday night boiling water came from both hot and cold faucets.
  • 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.
• 3

  rareinformalTo work on (something) as a plumber.

  • 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.
  • 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.
• 4

  rareslangTo do, work, devise (something).

  • 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.
  • 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.
• 5

  rareinformalTo equip (something) with plumbing.

  • 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.
  • 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.