See Also: gutter(dictionary)
gutter(2)(dictionary)
gutter(1)(dictionary)
gutter(medicine)
Gutter - Bowling(gambling)
gutter 1, noun(dictionary)
paravertebral gutter(medicine)
gutter wound(medicine)
gutter fracture(medicine)
gutter 2, verb(dictionary)

gutter(1) (iou)



gutter noun1 & adjective. ME.
[Anglo-Norman gotere, Old French gotiere (mod. gouttiere) from Proto-Romance formed as GUTTA noun1: see -ER2.]
A. noun.
A watercourse. Orig. also, a downpour. ME-M19.
b. A furrow or track made by running water. L16-M19.
A shallow trough fixed below the eaves of a roof, or a channel at the side of a road, to carry off rainwater. ME.
b. A channel forming a receptacle for refuse or foul matter (lit. & fig.), a sink. Now dial. LME.
c. sing. & (usu.) in pl. Mud, filth. Chiefly Scot. E18.
d. fig. The milieu of very poor people or people without breeding. M19.
Times Middle-class courtesans..were always the toast of society when lower-class street walkers were considered the gutter.
A groove or elongated hollow in a living organism. LME-E18.
An artificial groove. Now only techn. M16.
A trough or pipe for the removal of fluid in an industrial process. M17.
Printing & Typography. A piece of furniture separating adjacent pages in a forme (also gutter-stick); the space between facing pages of an open book etc. or (loosely) between columns on a page; the space between adjacent (rows and columns of) stamps on a sheet. M19.
b. adjective. Brought up in or appropriate to the gutter (sense 2d above); of a low or disreputable character. M19.
A. Burgess Her beauty was marred by a gutter accent and vocabulary.
Comb. & special collocations: gutter-blood Scot. a person of low breeding; gutter-crawling kerb-crawling; gutter journalism, gutter press: (considered as) fit only for the gutter; marked by sensationalism and vulgarity; gutter-splint a splint moulded to the shape of the limb; gutter-stick: see sense A.6 above; gutter-tile a tile used in the construction of gutters, or to line the valleys of a roof.
gutterling noun a person of low breeding M19.