Other forms: gutters, guttering
A gutter is the channel that catches rainwater and carries it away. The plastic trough clipped along the edge of a roof, and the dip at the side of a road where leaves and water collect.
A bowling alley has gutters too, the narrow lanes on each side that swallow a bad ball — hence a gutter ball. The word carries a hard social shadow: the gutter means the lowest, poorest kind of life, so a person is dragged up out of the gutter, and a mind in the gutter is thinking about sex. The gutter press is a scornful name for cheap, prying newspapers. A candle or a flame can gutter, meaning burn unsteadily and nearly go out. Printers call the inner margin between two facing pages the gutter.
1noungutterA channel along the edge of a roof that carries rainwater away.
“The gutter was blocked with wet leaves and the water came over the edge.”
2noundipThe dip at the side of a road where water runs to the drain.
“A cigarette end floated down the gutter towards the drain.”
3nounnarrowThe narrow sunken channel on each side of a bowling lane.
“His third ball went straight into the gutter.”
4nounlowestThe lowest and poorest conditions of life.
“He clawed his way up out of the gutter and never spoke of it.”
5verbflameOf a flame: to burn unsteadily and almost go out.
“The candle guttered in the draught from the door.”
gutter is a drainage channel.
A gutter is named after a single drop of water. Latin gutta meant drop; Old French built goutiere from it, Anglo-Norman had guttere, and Middle English gutter. By the time it reached English the word meant the whole channel, not the drops running down it.
Latin
gutta — drop
Old French
goutiere
Anglo-Norman
guttere
Middle English
gutter
English, today
gutter
From Middle English gutter, guttur, goter, from Anglo-Norman guttere, from Old French goutiere (French gouttière), ultimately from Latin gutta (“drop”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA