城市裡真正的供水設備
這一家就是核心畫面本身，差別只在鏡頭拉多遠：拉遠看到整座城市的系統，拉近看到其中一棟建築。
noun · B2
The whole system a town or city uses to store and move water — the reservoirs, the pumps and the pipes that carry water to homes, schools and other buildings.
自來水系統
核心畫面
Picture everything that has to exist before water comes out of your tap: a store of water somewhere high or somewhere large, pumps that push it along, and running under every street. None of that is the water. It is the machinery built around the water to make it go where people want it to go. That built system — plus the power to move water through them — is the picture the word holds. Once you can see it, the word can be pointed at one building instead of a whole city, at a garden instead of a town, or at the inside a person.
可以想成：在水從你家水龍頭流出來之前，中間必須存在的那一整套東西。某個地方有一座水庫，有抽水機把水推著走，還有埋在每…更多收起
可以想成：在水從你家水龍頭流出來之前，中間必須存在的那一整套東西。某個地方有一座水庫，有抽水機把水推著走，還有埋在每條街下面的水管。這些都不是水本身。它們是為了讓水去到人要它去的地方而蓋出來的機械。管子，加上讓水在管子裡移動的力量——這就是這個字抓住的畫面。看懂這個畫面之後，這個字就可以指一整座城市，也可以只指其中一棟建築，可以搬進花園，甚至可以搬進人的身體裡。From the word’s history
Wiktionary gives the word as water plus works, where works means machinery or a factory — the same works that makes steelworks and gasworks. So the name says plainly what the picture is: the works built for water.
字典記載這個字是 water 加 works，而 works 本身就有「機械、工廠」的意思，跟 steelworks（鋼鐵廠）、gasworks（瓦斯廠）是同一個造字模式。所以這個名字本來就把畫面說得很白：為了水而蓋的那套設備。
Wiktionary, waterworks etymology 1 (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:909602697): "From water + works (machine, mechanism; factory or factories)."
Three branches
為了好看而做的水的機關
一樣是管子加上讓水移動的力量，只是目的換了：不是把水送到廚房，而是把水送到空中給人看。
noun · C1
In older writing, a set of pipes, fountains and pools built in a garden so that water rises, falls and splashes for people to look at.
園林水景設施
把水的設備搬到人身上
英文把「管子加上會流動的水」這個畫面整個搬到身體上，於是同一個字可以指身體裡的管路，也可以指說來就來的眼淚。
noun · C1
The parts inside your body that make and carry away urine. This is a gentle, everyday way of talking about them instead of using the medical words.
泌尿系統（婉轉說法）