From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Plumbing \Plumb"ing\, n.
1. The art of casting and working in lead, and applying it to
building purposes; especially, the business of furnishing,
fitting, and repairing pipes for conducting water, sewage,
etc. --Gwilt.
[1913 Webster]
2. The lead or iron pipes, and other apparatus, used in
conveying water, sewage, etc., in a building.
[1913 Webster]
From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:
Plumb \Plumb\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. {Plumbed} (pl[u^]md); p. pr.
& vb. n. {Plumbing} (pl[u^]m"[i^]ng).]
1. To adjust by a plumb line; to cause to be perpendicular;
as, to plumb a building or a wall.
[1913 Webster]
2. To sound with a plumb or plummet, as the depth of water;
hence, to examine by test; to ascertain the depth,
quality, dimension, etc.; to sound; to fathom; to test.
[1913 Webster]
He did not attempt to plumb his intellect. --Ld.
Lytton.
[1913 Webster]
3. To seal with lead; as, to plumb a drainpipe.
[1913 Webster]
4. To supply, as a building, with a system of plumbing.
[1913 Webster]
From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]:
plumbing
n 1: utility consisting of the pipes and fixtures for the
distribution of water or gas in a building and for the
disposal of sewage [syn: {plumbing}, {plumbing system}]
2: the occupation of a plumber (installing and repairing pipes
and fixtures for water or gas or sewage in a building) [syn:
{plumbing}, {plumbery}]
3: measuring the depths of the oceans [syn: {bathymetry},
{plumbing}]
From The Jargon File (version 4.4.7, 29 Dec 2003) [jargon]:
plumbing
n.
[Unix] Term used for {shell} code, so called because of the prevalence of
pipelines that feed the output of one program to the input of another.
Under Unix, user utilities can often be implemented or at least prototyped
by a suitable collection of pipelines and temp-file grinding encapsulated
in a shell script; this is much less effort than writing C every time, and
the capability is considered one of Unix's major winning features. A few
other OSs such as IBM's VM/CMS support similar facilities. Esp.: used in
the construction hairy plumbing (see {hairy}). ?You can kluge together a
basic spell-checker out of sort(1), comm(1), and tr(1) with a little
plumbing.? See also {tee}.
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