sb.
1. A spool, pipe, or nozzle, through which water is discharged; also, † a squirt, syringe.
1390. Gower, Conf., III. 125. This signe [sc. Aquarius] is verraily resembled Lich to a man which halt assembled In eyther hand a water spoute, Wherof the stremes rennen oute.
1585. Higins, Junius’ Nomencl., 393/2. Sipho, a waterspowt, or a water squirt.
1638. Cal. Anc. Rec. Dublin (1892), III. 342. An instrument called a water spoute, which is verie necessarie for quenchinge of any greate fire sodainlie.
1730. A. Gordon, Maffei’s Amphith., 230. Next follows the Cornish,… with a Water-spout.
1751. Bankton, Inst. Law Scot., I. 682. One cannot, by his fact or deed, throw the water from his own upon his neighbour’s grounds, by water-spouts or otherwise.
1821. Praed, Gog, Poems 1865, I. 97. The red blood started out Like water from a water-spout.
1841. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, lxv. Lighted brands came whirling down,… One rolled beneath a wooden bench … another caught a water-spout. Ibid. (1848), Dombey, xlii. Mr. Carker … looked down at Mr. Dombey … like a leering face on an old water-spout.
attrib. 1611. Speed, Hist. Gt. Brit., IX. xiii. § 2. The Maior to attend in his owne person as chiefe Cup-waiter … to serue the King in a Cup of gold with spices, and for his Fees to haue the said Cup, and a Water-spout-pot of gold thereunto belonging.
1881. Instr. Census Clerks (1885), 92/2. Spouting Maker. Water Spout Maker.
† b. A jet of water from a fountain or from a geyser. Obs.
1634. Brereton, Trav. (Chetham Soc.), 56. We were then brought down to the water-work, where was a ball tossed and danced two yards high by the strength and force of the water-spout.
1712. J. James, trans. Le Blond’s Gardening, 4. Fountains with Water-spouts.
1804. Naval Chron., XI. 43. There are several water-spouts of inferior note near the spring of Geyser.
¶ 2. In Ps. xlii. 7 (Bible version) the word is now commonly apprehended as an example of sense 3 below. It was, however, probably intended as a metaphorical use of sense 1; and it seems likely that the meteorological sense 3 arose from recollection of the passage of the psalm.
The Heb. word çinnōr, here rendered by ‘waterspout,’ occurs elsewhere only in 2 Sam. v. 8, where it has been interpreted ‘spout or gutter on a roof’: so Vulg. domatum fistulas (Wyclif 1382 ‘the goters of the hows eues,’ Douay ‘the gutters of the house toppes’): the Bible of 1611 has ‘the gutter,’ and the Revised Version 1881 ‘the watercourse.’ In the psalm, the word is rendered in the LXX. by καταρράκτης and in the Vulg. by cataracta (Wycl. ‘gooteris,’ Douay ‘floud-gates’); the mod. translators from the Heb. essayed to find a literal rendering in accordance with the apparent sense of the word in 2 Sam. v. 8; hence Pagninus has fistularum (whence Coverdale by misapprehension renders ‘whistles’); the Great Bible (1539), has ‘water-pipes.’
1611. Bible, Ps. xlii. 7. Deepe calleth vnto deepe at the noyse of thy water-spouts.
3. Meteorol. A gyrating column of mist, spray and water, produced by the action of a whirlwind on a portion of the sea and the clouds immediately above it.
1738. T. Shaw, Trav., 362. Water Spouts are more frequent near the Capes of Latikea, Greego, and Carmel than in any other Part of the Mediterranean Sea.
1747. Scheme Equip. Men of War, 23. Like Monsoons or Water-Spouts, the higher they rise, the more they are contracted.
1787. trans. Volney’s Trav. Syria & Egypt (1788), I. 340. And hence will result those columns of water known by the name of Typhons and water-spouts.
1815. J. Smith, Panorama Sci. & Art, II. 51. When a whirlwind happens at sea, or over the surface of water, it forms the phenomenon called a water-spout.
1818. Keats, Endym., III. 345. When a dread waterspout had rear’d aloft Its hungry hugeness.
1829. J. Rennie, in Loudon’s Mag. Nat. Hist., I. 458. Water-spouts make their appearance from the bosom of a heavy cloud,… gradually descending in a point like an inverted cone, sometimes perpendicularly, and sometimes bending, or waved.
1900. G. Tyrrell, Oil & Wine (1907), 99. After many vain reachings towards one another, sea and sky at last unite in the waterspout.
b. A sudden and violent fall of rain; a cloudburst.
1779. Thicknesse, Journ. France (1789), I. 351. The water-spouts which fell into the middle of those narrow streets almost deluged us.
1815. Scott, Guy M., xxiii. Heaps of gravel and stones, which had been swept together when some torrent or water-spout from the neighbouring hills overflowed the marshy ground below. Ibid. (1827), Highl. Widow, v. This mountain rivulet, suddenly swelled by a water-spout, or thunderstorm, has often been the cause of those accidents, which, [etc.].
1842. Borrow, Bible in Spain, xxvi. The demons of the clouds … assailed them with water-spouts as they toiled up the steep winding paths of Fuencebadon.
1862. J. Skelton, Nugæ Crit., vii. 301. It had begun to rain … a down-pour, a pelt, a water-spout.
1889. Gretton, Memory’s Harkback, 15. A waterspout burst on the hill overhanging the village of Mordiford.
c. fig.
1852. J. Bright, in G. M. Trevelyan, Life (1913), 201. ‘After Lord Derby, the deluge,’ says Lord Maidstone…. The ‘deluge’ means Manchester, it is said—a sort of political waterspout which is to sweep away all that Peer and Parson hold dear.
Hence Waterspout v. intr. (impers.), nonce-wd.
1892. Stevenson, Vailima Lett. (1895), 190. It was waterspouting: we were drenched before we got out of the town.
