effluent

English

Etymology

From French effluent, from Latin effluens, effluentis.

Adjective

effluent (not comparable)

1. Flowing out; outflowing.
   • 1860, Benjamin Franklin Barrett, Letters on the Divine Trinity: Addressed to Henry Ward Beecher:

     But while the effluent beams of the sun, and their quickening power in the natural sphere, furnish a good illustration of my idea of the Holy Spirit, I may, perhaps, illustrate the idea still better by a reference to human thoughts and affections […]

Noun

effluent (countable and uncountable, plural effluents)

1. (countable) A stream that flows out, such as from a lake or reservoir; an outflow; effluence.
2. Sewage water that has been (partially) treated, and is released into a natural body of water; a flow of any liquid waste.
   • 2014 June 14, “It's a gas”, in The Economist, volume 411, number 8891:

     One of the hidden glories of Victorian engineering is proper drains. Isolating a city’s effluent and shipping it away in underground sewers has probably saved more lives than any medical procedure except vaccination.

Translations

flow of liquid waste

• Bulgarian: водосток (bg) m (vodostok)
• Catalan: efluent m
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 廢水／废水 (zh) (fèishuǐ), 污水 (zh) (wūshuǐ), 髒水／脏水 (zh) (zāngshuǐ)

• Finnish: jätevesi (fi)
• Italian: effluente m
• Maori: waiparakaingaki
• Spanish: efluente m, vertido (es) m

French

Pronunciation

• Audio:

  (file)

Adjective

effluent (feminine effluente, masculine plural effluents, feminine plural effluentes)

1. effluent

Noun

effluent m (plural effluents)

1. effluent

Further reading

• “effluent”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Latin

Verb

effluent

1. third-person plural future active indicative of effluō