wastewater

• waste water, waste-water

From waste +‎ water.

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wastewater (countable and uncountable, plural wastewaters)

1. Any water that has been used in some human domestic or industrial activity and, as a result, now contains waste products.

   Coordinate terms: nightsoil; stormwater

   Near-synonyms: sewage, sullage, graywater, blackwater, washwater, poop water (informal)

   • 1976 September 10, Ronald Sullivan, “PROGRAM SHAPES UP ON HARBOR SLUDGE”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:

     The commission's recommendations would require the removal of toxins and heavy metals from wastewaters that now run into regional rivers and New York Harbor untreated, and collect at their bottom.

   • 2012, Frank Spellman, Revonna Bieber, Environmental Health and Science Desk Reference, page 831:

     As the zoogleal slime reenters the wastewater, excess solids and waste products are stripped off the media as sloughings. These sloughings are transported with the wastewater flow to a settling tank for removal.

   • 2023 February 20, Dwight Garner, “QAnon and the Fear and Loathing of an American Conspiracy Theory”, in The New York Times‎^[2]:

     Flash forward to 2017, early in the Trump presidency. From the wastewaters of the internet, cryptic comments float up from an anonymous figure known only as Q.