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I was playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the NES when I stopped to ponder; when in a place full of sewage, am I in the sewer or am I in the sewers? Mayhaps both?

Also on further use of the root word, if a sewer contains and, by mixture, creates sewage then would a person covered in that sewage be thusly sued? sewn? become a part of the sewage, adding to and mixing it become a sewer themselves. To add to this comical display, imagine this person coming back from a renaissance fair wearing homemade clothing prepared for the setting and is tossed asunder to lose mass. is the sewn(made by way of needle and thread) sewn(thing in the sewer) worn by the sewer in the sewer now garbage garbage(medieval garb)?

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    I am upvoting this simply because of the hilariousness of this text. Nobody edit this, please.
    – Frantisek
    Commented Apr 4, 2015 at 23:12
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    See sewn and sown and sone and suer and sewer times three and sower and and soughed and sawyer and Siouan and soigné and have a nice day. :)
    – tchrist ♦
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 0:28
  • to tchrist: "sewer (plural sewers) A pipe or system of pipes used to remove human waste and to provide drainage." see sewer means a system of pipes. would multiple systems of pipes be sewers? and when does one system meet another. seems all too arbitrary for me.
    – Andrew Raymond Peters
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 0:33
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    Best opening sentence of any Stack Exchange question ever.
    – immutabl
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 0:55
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    To give a straight answer, you are in "the sewer" in the sense of being in a specific place, and in "the sewers" in the sense of being in a system or network of pipes used to convey sewage. And to help you get your mind out of the sewers, consider than many people who sew as an avocation refer to themselves as "sewers".
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 1:36

2 Answers 2

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We do not say "the sewer of Paris", unless we mean "the sewer that is Paris". We say "the sewers of Paris". A charming rat who was a cook found himself in the sewers of Paris.

It may be regional, but in practice in American "sewers" refers to a sewer system and "sewer" either refers to that part of the sewer system at hand ("Oh man, my phone fell through the grate into the sewer."), or is used as what amounts to a euphemism for a pungent soup of fecal matter and urine. "Get your mind out of the sewer."

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  • Couldn't we say 'the sewer of Paris' if there were only one pipe.
    – Mitch
    Commented Apr 7, 2015 at 0:42
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For your actual (first) question, Andrew Raymond Peters gave a good answer: sewers can be plural, or a sewer can be singular. A single pipe or a thousand could be a sewer, but a single pipe cannot be sewers.

As to the rest of your so-called questions:

Excellent riddling and "pun"ditry! Chapeau!

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  • In singular it is mostly used to refer to the part of the system ("Oh man, my phone fell through the grate into the sewer.")
    – JuanRocamonde
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 13:35
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    Not so. YourDictionary has sewer A pipe or system of pipes used to remove human waste and to provide drainage. So sewers can mean pipes used to remove... So sewer and sewers may be used interchangeably for the sewerage system.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 5, 2015 at 14:18
  • @EdwinAshworth Can you find any actual uses of the singular to refer to the whole system without being used along with a word like system?
    – Barmar
    Commented Apr 6, 2015 at 18:24
  • These early results: 'Living in the Sewers of Colombia - YouTube ... they live in the sewer but have money for crack and cocaine. ... HOW ALL THE [MUTANTS] LIVED IN THE SEWER UNDER THE CITY.' // 'Jamaica rules gay teens can live in the sewer. Police have repeatedly attempted to evict the LGBTI youths from the sewers'. This usage is reminiscent of 'in the gutter', 'off the street', where a particular (count) example is not implied. // I wasn't suggesting that 'sewer' and 'sewers' are always interchangeable, but that BH's arguing 'plural sewers must mean separate systems somehow' is faulty.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Apr 6, 2015 at 18:40

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