Other forms: sprinklers
A sprinkler is the device that sprays water in circles over the garden. Set up the sprinkler, a lawn sprinkler, the sprinkler came on.
Watering in the evening loses far less to evaporation than watering at noon, which is why sprinklers run at dusk. A fire sprinkler is a quite different thing: each head opens on its own when the heat reaches it, so only the ones over the fire go off.
1nounsprinklerThe device that sprays water in circles over the garden.
“The children ran through the sprinkler on the lawn to cool off.”
2nounfireA device in a ceiling that sprays water by itself when it senses a fire.
“The smoke set off the sprinklers and soaked the whole office.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Middle Dutch
sprenkelen
Middle English
sprenkelen
English
sprinkle
English, today
sprinkler
From sprinkle + -er. sprinkle comes from Middle English sprenkelen, sprynklen, from Middle Dutch sprenkelen, equivalent to sprink + le. Cognate with Dutch sprenkelen (“to sprinkle”), German Low German sprenkeln (“to sprinkle; dapple”), German sprenkeln (“to sprinkle”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA