spigot
pronunciation
How to pronounce spigot in British English:
UK [ˈspɪgət]
How to pronounce spigot in American English:
US [ˈspɪɡət]
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- Noun:
- a faucet for drawing water from a pipe or cask
- a plug for a bunghole in a cask
Word Origin
- spigot (n.)
- late 14c., "plug used to stop the hole of a cask," according to Barnhart probably from Old French *espigot (compare Gascony dialect espigot "core of a fruit, small ear of grain"), diminutive of Old Provençal espiga "ear of grain," from Latin spica "ear of grain" (see spike (n.2)). Meaning "valve for controlling the flow of a liquid" is from 1520s; the connecting notion is "that which controls or restrains."
Example
- 1. The spigot of racial hatred had been turned back on .
- 2. First , fill a garden hose with water from the outside spigot .
- 3. If the financial spigot does not open again , most of the new entrants will disappear .
- 4. The solutions were even more elegant perhaps than the one for monitoring electricity . A transducer affixed to an outdoor spigot can detect changes in water pressure that correspond to the resident 's water usage .
- 5. He returns to the terrain of " embracing defeat " , marvelling at how the vicious racial hatreds of the pacific war dissipated so quickly , as though " turned off like a spigot " .