gutter
- a channel at the side or in the middle of a road or street, for leading off surface water.
- a channel at the eaves or on the roof of a building, for carrying off rain water.
- any channel, trough, or the like for carrying off fluid.
- a furrow or channel made by running water.
- Bowling. a sunken channel on each side of the alley from the line marking the limit of a fair delivery of the ball to the sunken area behind the pins.
- the state or abode of those who live in degradation, squalor, etc.: the language of the gutter.
- the white space formed by the inner margins of two facing pages in a bound book, magazine, or newspaper.
- to flow in streams.
- (of a candle) to lose molten wax accumulated in a hollow space around the wick.
- (of a lamp or candle flame) to burn low or to be blown so as to be nearly extinguished.
- to form gutters, as water does.
- to make gutters in; channel.
- to furnish with a gutter or gutters: to gutter a new house.
Origin of gutter
Related Words for gutter
eaves, duct, tube, dike, pipe, sewer, culvert, conduit, funnel, drain, gully, spout, trench, sluice, trough, moat, channel, watercourse, runnel, fosseExamples from the Web for gutter
Contemporary Examples of gutter
He piles the trash into the can and stands in the gutter, waiting for the light to change.
Speaking with The Tottenville Review, Foy calls his school of writing “gutter opera.”
But all publications seem to go to the gutter when it comes to Lewinsky.
But I reserve the distinction for gutter dwelling and otherwise abhorrent behavior to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
Davis begins the film, punched by an aggressor into the gutter and ends it the same way.
Historical Examples of gutter
I can throw him in the gutter as easy as I could them young ones, and he knows it.
Ester Ried Yet SpeakingIsabella Alden
A dozen times on the way home had Dirk been on the point of consigning it to the gutter.
Ester Ried Yet SpeakingIsabella Alden
Why, they might just as well be thrown into the gutter and carried off in the scavenger's cart.
The Three Cities Trilogy, CompleteEmile Zola
You have begun life at the top of the tree, and you have chosen to fling your chances into the gutter.
Henry DunbarM. E. Braddon
They gutter highways, but oftenest let Low Ways gutter them.
gutter
- a channel along the eaves or on the roof of a building, used to collect and carry away rainwater
- a channel running along the kerb or the centre of a road to collect and carry away rainwater
- a trench running beside a canal lined with clay puddle
- either of the two channels running parallel to a tenpin bowling lane
- printing
- the space between two pages in a forme
- the white space between the facing pages of an open book
- the space between two columns of type
- the space left between stamps on a sheet in order to separate them
- surfing a dangerous deep channel formed by currents and waves
- Australian (in gold-mining) the channel of a former watercourse that is now a vein of gold
- the gutter a poverty-stricken, degraded, or criminal environment
- (tr) to make gutters in
- (intr) to flow in a stream or rivulet
- (intr) (of a candle) to melt away by the wax forming channels and running down in drops
- (intr) (of a flame) to flicker and be about to go out
Word Origin for gutter
Word Origin and History for gutter
late 13c., "watercourse, water drainage channel along the side of a street," from Anglo-Norman gotere, from Old French guitere, goutiere (13c., Modern French gouttière) "gutter, spout" (of water), from goute "a drop," from Latin gutta "a drop." Meaning "furrow made by running water" is from 1580s. Meaning "trough under the eaves of a roof to carry off rainwater" is from mid-14c. Figurative sense of "low, profane" is from 1818. In printers' slang, from 1841.
late 14c., "to make or run in channels," from gutter (n.). In reference to candles (1706) it is from the channel that forms on the side as the molten wax flows off. Related: Guttered; guttering.
Idioms and Phrases with gutter
gutter
see in the gutter.