water butt
- noun
- /ˈwɔːtə bʌt/
- UK
:
depósito de agua
- Installing a water butt can help reduce water bills by utilizing rainwater.
Examples
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Many homeowners use a water butt to collect rainwater for their gardens.
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While water companies struggle to replace worn-out pipes, we are preserving our own supplies by storing rainwater in systems as simple as water butts supplied from downpipes and as sophisticated as large underground filter systems.
Blog text (8) -
Just recently he was away for a weekend, and I did a bit of DIY plumbing of a water butt to the downpipe. He came in after looking at it and said I could use his tool kit anytime if that was the quality of my work. Now that was a big compliment!
Blog text (26) -
She filled the water butt with rainwater to water the plants during the dry season.
Synonyms
2
3.3
A large container that collects rainwater from roofs for later use
How Big
Surface Forms
Morphology
The compound is directly compositional: 'water' (the liquid) + 'butt' (a large cask/container) yields a container for water (rainwater). This noun+noun compounding follows a common pattern cross-linguistically (e.g., 'rain barrel', 'water barrel') and would be readily understood by a B1 learner who knows the constituent senses (though other senses of 'butt' like 'cigarette butt' could cause ambiguity if the container sense is not known).
Etymology
Water butt: The name water butt comes from an old meaning of butt as a big wooden 'barrel' for holding liquid. The image is simple: a water butt is a barrel that catches and stores rain, so the term now means 'a container placed outside to collect and store rainwater'.