cistern
Americannoun
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cisterns
plural
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a reservoir, tank, or container for storing or holding water or other liquid.
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Anatomy. a reservoir or receptacle of some natural fluid of the body.
noun
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a tank for the storage of water, esp on or within the roof of a house or connected to a WC
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an underground reservoir for the storage of a liquid, esp rainwater
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anatomy another name for cisterna
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of cistern
1250–1300; Middle English cistern ( e ) < Latin cisterna, equivalent to cist ( a ) ( see cist 1) + -erna noun suffix
Explanation
A cistern is an underground tank that holds water. A long time ago, cistern water was used for drinking, but nowadays developed parts of the world mainly use it for watering plants and flushing toilets. The oldest cisterns that we know of were built in the Middle East about 12,000 years ago, which is around when farming was invented. That's no coincidence. It would be tough to collect enough water to grow barley and wheat without storing the water in something, especially in a place as dry as the Middle East.
Vocabulary lists containing cistern
The Magician's Nephew
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Surviving Hitler
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Civil Engineering
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
A large bear and her three cubs fell into the concrete cistern in Marshall Canyon County Park near the Claremont Wilderness Park’s 5-Mile Loop Trail, where they were rescued late Saturday night, the L.A.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2026
They traced the sound back to the cistern and climbed up about seven feet to its small opening.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 30, 2026
Related: My plumber charged $160 to fix the cistern on my toilet — but created another problem.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 24, 2026
“The cistern on my toilet has been constantly refilling and making a hissing noise.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 11, 2026
I found him behind the house, at the cistern, filling a pitcher for the house.
From "Beyond the Bright Sea" by Lauren Wolk
School children have outings to waterworks to understand how precious the resource is, and households have embraced water-saving devices for shower heads and toilet cisterns.
From BBC ● Aug. 29, 2026
Farmers in tractors tugged water cisterns and aimed hoses at the blaze.
From Barron's ● Jul. 13, 2026
Another approach would be to place cisterns scattered across neighborhoods to store non-potable water locally for firefighting — as is done in Tokyo and other cities in Japan.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 17, 2025
The utility recently installed water hookups for one secluded mountaintop community that had been relying on cisterns and a truck hauling creek water—a project Brewster said took six years to accumulate enough government money for.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 17, 2025
It was always hard labor—digging cisterns, building roads, hauling bricks, crushing rocks.
From "Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps" by Andrea Warren
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
