Wellwater

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Water that is pumped or hauled up from a well dug into the ground, often used for drinking or household needs
2. Liquid taken from an underground well shaft, typically drawn by bucket, pump or other mechanism for domestic use
3. The groundwater collected from a dug or drilled well, which is commonly used as a private source of supply

Etymology: Wellwater is about as transparent a compound as English offers: it is simply "well" plus "water," and the sense has stayed put since the start. The Old English form "wiellewæter" meant "springwater," the water that rises up naturally from the ground, which is exactly what a well draws on. Its ancestry is a pair of ordinary native words, not a loan from another language. The second element is the more telling one. "Water" descends from Old English "wæter," a word with deep roots in the language's earliest vocabulary, while "well" in the sense of a source of water is the same root that gives us the verb "to well up," meaning to rise and flow out. So the compound literally describes water that wells up out of the earth, a picture the two parts still carry when read side by side.

Synonyms: well water, spring water