hosepipe

plural hosepipes

1. South AfricaSouthern USUKA flexible pipe for carrying water or other liquids.

   In a hot three-week drought that had begin in July he could have saved it, despite the hosepipe ban. But he had been too busy to haul full buckets the garden's length.

   2022, Ian McEwan, Lessons, page 7

   1 more example

   Specifically, [Roger] Bailey [the chief technical officer of the Thames Tideway Tunnel] is hoping for “storm test three”, a downpour so heavy that it fills the 16 mile-long tunnel to 90 per cent of its capacity. That’s because London has been so dry since the sewer was connected in February that engineers haven’t been able to fully test whether it works as intended. Despite Southern Water lifting its hosepipe ban last week, more than 7 million people in England are still under a ban. England had its driest spring in more than a century, while the Environment Agency recently warned that drought is likely to continue into next year. According to the Met Office, the City of London has had just 61 per cent of average rainfall since February. “We don’t really want to wish lots and lots of rain and storms on people, but we do want to test our tunnel,” Bailey said. The £4.6 billion Thames Tideway is one of the city’s deepest tunnels and measures seven metres in diameter, much bigger than Tube lines.

   2025 November 7, Adam Vaughan, “Why London’s ‘supersewer’ is desperately in need of a downpour. The Thames Tideway is designed to prevent sewage spills into waterways, but the capital has had such a long dry spell that it hasn’t been properly tested yet”, in The Times (London)

   Synonyms: garden hose

present singular third person hosepipes · participle present hosepiping · participle past hosepiped · past hosepiped

1. broadcastingTo film with erratic panning movements of the camera.