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For example, a carpenter works in carpentry and a plumber works in plumbing. So what trade does an electrician work in? Electrical?
I searched the definition for "electrical" and found that it gives the part of speech as an adjective and not a noun like the dictionary does with carpentry or plumbing.
This is confusing to me.
I would like to understand and know how to talk about the trade for an electrician.
I would appreciate it if someone could help clarify and explain this to me.
It is called electrical work (or you could use electrical trade). It is a noun phrase as the adjective electrical modifies the noun work. There isn't a single word noun for the trade of an electrician. Electricians were originally scientists concerned with electricity but this sense is very rare now.
Here is a usage from Wikipedia's "Electrician" article:
Many jurisdictions have regulatory restrictions concerning electrical work for safety reasons due to the many hazards of working with electricity.
It may seem odd (or it may just be because electrician work is relatively new as a profession compared to the others), but electricians do electrical (or electrical work, which is probably more common than the standalone noun). For example, there is a "Carpentry, Electrical, Plumbing and Masonry" program at Newton College and Career Academy. This is used outside of titles, such as in the news article Surveillance cameras help capture holiday thieves:
“There’s all different types of cameras out there,” says Ken Green who works in electrical at Lowe’s in Waterford [Connecticut] where home security is DIY do it yourself.
And here's another example as a noun, referring to a project where electrical work needs to be done: When the floor/tile guy says, “he can do the electrical” this is what he might mean.
The dictionary may not explain this usage, but it is idiomatic.
The word you're looking for is "electrics".
However, it's not often used in this context. Most people would say "electrical work".
It's also worth noting that if you modify the type of work to be on electrical devices (say phones, computers, etc.), rather than power delivery, you'd typically refer to that as "electronics".
There does not seem to be a single word derived from the word electricity, no doubt because electricity appeared late in the history of trades. The first electrical device seems to have been the telegraph by Francis Ronalds in 1816, not much more than a hundred years ago. Those were the times when engineering came to the for in all sorts of ways, and the profession of engineers.
Those who go into peoples homes to sort out or install electrical devices are generally called electricians. They can also be referred to a electrical engineers. The trade itself can be called electrical engineering. It is, alas, two words, but surely two words are better than none?
One word which might fit is
Of course there are features of electrical installation which are not purely related to fitting wires, but fitting wires certainly does take a significant fraction of the job. More to the point though, anyone else you're talking to will understand.
