- A channel at the edge of a street or road for carrying off surface water.
- A trough fixed under or along the eaves for draining rainwater from a roof. Also called regionally eaves spout, eaves trough, Also called rainspout, spouting.
- A furrow or groove formed by running water.
- A trough or channel for carrying something off, such as that on either side of a bowling alley.
- Printing. The white space formed by the inner margins of two facing pages, as of a book.
- A degraded and squalid class or state of human existence.
v., -tered, -ter·ing, -ters. v.tr.
- To form gutters or furrows in.
- To provide with gutters.
- To flow in channels or rivulets.
- To melt away through the side of the hollow formed by a burning wick. Used of a candle.
- To burn low and unsteadily; flicker.
Befitting the lowest class of human life; vulgar, sordid, or unprincipled: gutter language; the gutter press.
[Middle English goter, guter, from Old French gotier, from gote, drop, from Latin gutta.]
REGIONAL NOTE Certain household words have proved important as markers for major U.S. dialect boundaries. The channels along the edge of a roof for carrying away rainwater (normally referred to in the plural) are variously known as eaves troughs or, less commonly, eaves spouts in parts of New England, the Great Lakes states, and, for the former, the West; spouting or rainspouts in eastern Pennsylvania and the Delmarva Peninsula; and gutters from Virginia southward. Along the Atlantic coast, the transition points have marked unusually clear boundaries for the three major dialect areas-Northern, Midland, and Southern-traditionally acknowledged by scholars of American dialects. Nowadays, however, Southern gutters seems to have become the standard U.S. term. According to the Dictionary of American Regional English, gutters has become well established in northern states along the Atlantic coast from Maine to New Jersey; in Illinois, Indiana, and Missouri; and as far west as California. See Note at andiron.
