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bathtub

UK/ˈbɑːθtʌb/US/ˈbæθtʌb/
nounA2Common in everyday speech and writing · #3,266 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: bathtubs

A bathtub is the long basin you fill with warm water and lie in. Taps at one end, and a plug on a chain.

American English says bathtub and British English usually says just the bath, which does double duty for the tub and for the act of washing in it. The word gives its name to a shape of curve used in engineering and to gin distilled illegally in the 1920s. Archimedes is supposed to have solved his problem in one, which is why a good idea in the bath is a small tradition.

Yannick Trottier (ytrottier) · CC BY-SA 3.0

Definitions of bathtub

  1. 1nounbathtubA large container for water in which a person washes.A2

    “He ran a hot bathtub and got in.”

Also accepted in games: bath, tub

Where it comes from

From bath + tub.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Around the House, A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 13 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

bathtub in the wild

  • Showering is common due to the efficiency of using it compared with using a bathtub.

    Shower

  • The name is more so used to describe its shape of a deep basin with high walls, like a bathtub.

    The Bathtub

  • Many but not all electronic consumer product life cycles follow the bathtub curve.

    Bathtub curve

  • Many gin cocktails such as Bee's Knees owe their existence to bathtub gin, as they were also created in order to mask the unpleasant taste.

    Bathtub gin

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.