| 词组 | sewage, sewerage |
| 释义 | sewage, sewerage In their principal senses, sewage and sewerage are distinct words. Sewage refers to the refuse carried off by sewers: • ... will be used to remove phosphates from the sewage —Annual Report, Allied Chemical Corp., 1970 Sewerage refers to the process of eliminating sewage: • ... attend to local needs such as ... drainage and sewerage, street lighting, rubbish collection —Ministry of Foreign Affairs, About New Zealand, 1982 Or to a system of sewers: • ... Fox Basin is treeless, roadless, without paint, without roofs, without sewerage —Josephine W. Johnson, Jordanstown, 1937 Both words were first recorded in these senses in 1834. The distinction in their meanings has never been strictly observed, however. It was also in 1834 that sewage was first used to mean "sewerage": • The public have ... built more sewage within the same level and the same term of years —Report of the Select Committee on Metropolitan Sewers, 1834 (OED) And it was not long afterward that sewerage was used to mean "sewage": • Which forms a part of the street mud ... rather than of the sewerage —Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, 1851 (OED) No one claims that the distinction between sewage and sewerage is vitally important, but usage commentators, dating back to the 1880 revised edition of Gould 1867, tend naturally to think that it should be observed. Use of sewage to mean "sewerage" is not the issue; it was never common, and seems no longer to occur. The "sewage" sense of sewerage persisted into the 20th century, though it too may be receding now: • ... poured a little social sewerage into his ears — George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel, 1859 • ... purification of water and sewerage —Science, 6 Nov. 1936 • ... shocked even his fellow partisans by the sewerage he poured forth in a New Year's address —Claude G. Bowers, Jefferson in Power, 1936 Dictionaries have treated this sense of sewerage as standard since 1864, but the punctilious writer may wish to use sewage instead (assuming that the punctilious writer does not wish to avoid the subject altogether). |
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