Other forms: plumbers
A plumber is the tradesperson you call when water pipes leak or a boiler fails. Call a plumber, a good plumber, the plumber is coming Tuesday.
The b is silent — PLUM-er. Plumbing is both the trade and the pipes themselves: the plumbing is ancient, a plumbing problem. In Britain gas work requires separate registration, so not every plumber may legally touch a boiler. Note plumb, meaning exactly vertical, and plumb the depths, meaning to reach the very bottom of something — both from the same lead weight on a line.
1nounplumberSomebody whose job is fitting and repairing water pipes.
“The plumber found the leak behind the bath.”
plumber is a tradesperson.
Latin plumbum meant lead, the metal, which is also why lead's chemical symbol is Pb. Pipes were made of lead, so the lead-worker became the pipe-worker, and the silent b is the last trace of the metal in the word.
Latin
plumbārius
Old French
plummier
Middle English
plumber
English, today
plumber
Built from
From Middle English plumber, from Old French plummier (French plombier); from Latin plumbārius, from plumbum (“lead or lead shot”). The verb sense “to botch” is perhaps from the negative stereotype of the occupation.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA