water engine

English

Noun

water engine (plural water engines)

  2. (archaic) An engine moved by water.
    Coordinate terms: steam engine, wind engine, horse engine, donkey engine, windmill, horse power
    Near-synonym: watermill
    In those days, grist mills were powered by water engines, wind engines, or horse engines.
  4. (archaic) An engine to raise water, often for mine drainage.
    Coordinate term: man engine (“an engine to raise men out of the mine”)
    Near-synonym: water pump
    In the earliest years after James Watt developed his steam engine, most of the capital that bought his engines came from mine owners who used them to power water engines for mine drainage.
  6. (archaic) A machine for extinguishing fires with water.
    Near-synonym: fire engine (synonymous in the pre–motor-truck era)
    In 1887, several businesses in this town pooled the funds necessary to buy a state-of-the-art water engine and a large new set of leather buckets for the bucket brigade.


This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.