Forms: 7 cest-, 9 sus-, sess-, 8– cesspool. [Of uncertain derivation.
The form cesperalle has suggested connection or popular confusion, with SUSPIRAL breathing hole, air-hole, ventilator q.v. The form cestpool, if genuine (compared with the dial. ‘cist, a cesspool’ in Halliwell) has suggested that the initial element may be a contraction of cestern, CISTERN, or at least that it has at some time been associated by popular etymology with that word. Prof. Skeat compares the form suspool with the dial. words suss ‘hogwash,’ soss ‘anything dirty or muddy’ (Halliwell); others have proposed derivation from CESS sb.4 bog. More suitable is that from It. cesso privy (:—L. secessus place of retirement, privy, drain), esp. as this is also commonly used for cessino the solid contents of the cesso, ‘materie grosse che si cavano dalle cloache delle case, che servano per ingrasso dei terreni’ (La Crusca). The spelling sess-pool taken with the essential meaning of a ‘pool for the retention of sediment,’ might indicate connection with L. sedēre, sess-um in sense ‘to sink, settle down.’ But all these are merely suggestions, calling for further evidence.]
1. A small well or excavation made in the bottom of a drain, under a grating, to collect and retain the sand or gravel carried by the stream.
[1583. in Bacon, Annalls of Ipswiche (1884), Cesperalle to be made for stopping of filthe by the brooke.]
1671. Act Common Council Lond., 27 Oct. ¶ 5. 18. A Fall or Cestpool of convenient bigness shall be made … to every Grate of the Common Sewer … to receive the Sand or Gravel coming to the same, so to prevent the choaking thereof.
1823. P. Nicholson, Pract. Build., 592/2. Sesspool, or Cesspool; a deep hole or well, under the mouth of a drain, for the reception of sediment, &c., by which the drain might be choked.
2. A well sunk to receive the soil from a water-closet, kitchen sink, etc.: properly one that retains the solid matter, and allows the liquid to escape.
It is sometimes built dry, so that the water escapes by percolation through the joints of the stone or brickwork into the surrounding soil, or it is built in mortar, and a drain formed to carry off the surplus water from near the top of it. (Gwilt.)
1782. Phil. Trans., LXXII. 364. We estimated the fall of the drain, from the eastern sink … to its termination in the cess-pool … at two feet.
1815. T. Forster, Atmospheric Phaenom. (ed. 2), 150. The smell of drains and suspools.
1850. Kingsley, Alt. Locke (1876), 11. The horrible stench of the cesspools.
1860. Piesse, Lab. Chem. Wonders, 98. [It will] render harmless the most offensive cesspool or drain.
b. (See quot.)
1871. Daily News, 16 Dec., 3/4. In Yorkshire effluvium-traps are frequently called cess-pools.
1883. E. A. Parkes, Pract. Hygiene (ed. 6), x. 367. The common Mason’s or dip-trap and the notorious D trap both of which are simply cess-pools.
3. fig. (Cf. sink, common sewer, etc.)
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., III. V. i. 288 (L.). The ‘Cesspool of Agio,’ now in a time of Paper Money, works with a vivacity unexampled, unimagined.
1864. Soc. Sci. Rev., 52. Australia refuses again to be made a moral cesspool for England.
1879. Farrar, St. Paul (1883), 235. Seneca … speaks of Rome as a cesspool of iniquity.
Hence Cesspoolage [cf. drainage, sewerage]. rare.
1864. Mayhew, Lond. Labour (ed. 2), II. 491/1 (Hoppe). Two modes of removing the wet refuse of the metropolis:… sewerage; and … cesspoolage.… By the system of cesspoolage the wet refuse of the household is collected in an adjacent tank, and, when the reservoir is full, the contents are removed to some other part.
