Other forms: plungers
A plunger is a rubber cup on a stick for clearing a blocked drain. Use a plunger, a sink plunger, the plunger worked.
It works by pushing and pulling water rather than air, so the cup must be under water to do anything, and the pull is what shifts the blockage. The cup-shaped kind is for a sink and the flanged kind for a lavatory, which most people do not know.
1nounplungerA rubber cup on a stick for clearing a blocked drain.
“The toilet was blocked, so I went to get the plunger.”
plunger is a tool.
Old French
plongier
Anglo-Norman
plungier
Middle English
plungen
English
plunge
English, today
plunger
Built from
From plunge + -er. plunge comes from Middle English plungen, ploungen, Anglo-Norman plungier, from Old French plongier, (Modern French plonger), from unattested Latin - frequentative plumbicō (“to throw a leaded line”), from plumbum (“lead”). Compare plumb, plounce.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA