sprinkler
Americannoun
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sprinklers
plural
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any of various devices for sprinkling, as a watering pot, a container of water with a perforated top used to sprinkle clothes before ironing, or especially a perforated ring or small stand with a revolving nozzle to which a hose is attached for watering a lawn with a fine, even spray.
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a person who sprinkles.
verb (used with object)
noun
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a device perforated with small holes that is attached to a garden hose or watering can and used to spray plants, lawns, etc, with water
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a person or thing that sprinkles
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See sprinkler system
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of sprinkler
Explanation
A sprinkler is a garden device that sprays water onto your grass or plants. You can attach a small lawn sprinkler to a hose in your yard when your flowers are looking droopy. Sprinklers are mainly used to irrigate, or provide water, to plants. There are complex systems of sprinklers that can be installed in the ground for a large area, like a public park or an estate's acres of lawns. The more common type of sprinkler hooks up to a hose and can be moved wherever it's needed — including in the middle of a yard for kids to run through in their bathing suits.
Vocabulary lists containing sprinkler
"Water at Work"
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1.7.B Using Ice to Keep Orange Groves Warm
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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:
The family spent £15,000 installing new sprinkler systems and huge fans to cool the cattle in their sheds when they sheltered from the heat outside.
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026
It started appearing in my parents’ pantry in Costco two-packs, usually beside gigantic cases of bottled water, enough paper towels to absorb a malfunctioning sprinkler system and gallon-sized jugs of olive oil.
From Salon ● Sep. 20, 2026
What she hadn't anticipated was that one of her performances, in which she debuted some unconventional moves including a sprinkler and a kangaroo hop, had gone viral.
From BBC ● Sep. 1, 2026
A conventional sprinkler behaves somewhat like a rotating rocket.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 17, 2026
It was a flat, dry place made green only by sprinkler systems.
From "Counting by 7s" by Holly Goldberg Sloan
She had to set up automatic sprinklers to keep the outdoor plants alive.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 17, 2026
During the fire’s rapid spread, the water system quickly lost pressure as crews drew heavily on hydrants, residents ran sprinklers and hoses, and water gushed out of melted pipes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 8, 2026
He put sprinklers on his roof to extinguish falling embers.
From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2026
It was blamed in part on the building’s highly flammable cladding and lack of alarms, sprinklers and a fire escape.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 20, 2026
He could just make them out through the screaming crowd and the gushing sprinklers.
From "A Tangle of Knots" by Lisa Graff
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Get a wordDefinitions 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.
