cesspool
- a cistern, well, or pit for retaining the sediment of a drain or for receiving the sewage from a house.
- any filthy receptacle or place.
- any place of moral filth or immorality: a cesspool of iniquity.
Origin of cesspool
Examples from the Web for cesspool
Contemporary Examples
On another, more macro level, did you find Europe to be such a cesspool of intrigue?
How The Cold War Endgame Played Out In The Rubble Of The Berlin WallWilliam O’Connor
November 9, 2014
The vote on Sunday could take Ukraine toward a modern functioning democracy or plunge it back into a cesspool of corruption.
It allows me to stomach the pathetic shenanigans of the cesspool of Washington, D.C.
In the cesspool of cynicism that is Indian politics, we thought his train ride struck a blow instead for a degree of idealism.
It's perpetuating a cesspool on Facebook for those who would perpetuate real world violence and rape.
Historical Examples
Scattering flowers upon a cesspool of iniquity will not purify it.
Gipsy LifeGeorge Smith
I should be the first to be ready to clean out any cesspool you like.
Crime and PunishmentFyodor Dostoevsky
The "cesspool question" had already been a subject of dispute between them.
Crime and PunishmentFyodor Dostoevsky
When we pass a cesspool we close our noses and try not to breathe.
A Family of NoblemenMikhal Saltykov
All the vice and misery of the country got thrown into that cesspool.
RavenshoeHenry Kingsley
cesspool
cesspit (ˈsɛsˌpɪt)
- Also called: sink, sump a covered cistern, etc, for collecting and storing sewage or waste water
- a filthy or corrupt placea cesspool of iniquity
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for cesspool
n.
also cess-pool, 1670s, the first element perhaps an alteration of cistern, perhaps a shortened form of recess [Klein]; or the whole may be an alteration of suspiral (c.1400), "drainpipe," from Old French sospiral "a vent, air hole," from sospirer "breathe," from Latin suspirare "breathe deep" [Barnhart]. Meaning extended to "tank at the end of the pipe," which would account for a possible folk-etymology change in final syllable.
Other possible etymologies: Italian cesso "privy," from Latin secessus "place of retirement" (in Late Latin "privy, drain"); dialectal suspool, from suss, soss "puddle;" or cess "a bog on the banks of a tidal river."