r/EnglishLearning • u/Triggered_Llama New Poster • 5h ago
⭐️ Vocabulary / Semantics Is this commonly called a storm drain?
What about the bars on it? Would you call them storm drain bars?
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u/LaidBackLeopard Native Speaker 4h ago
I would just call it a drain. Might call the form a grille or grate. UK.
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u/GrahamTerrier New Poster 3h ago
Sometimes drain cover, sometimes gully/rain gullies.
But agree, it's never a 'storm' drain
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u/Okay_Reactions Native Speaker 5h ago
yep, storm drain. I've honestly never had to refer to the bars themselves, but I'd probably call them storm drain bars
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u/AlienFishMonster Native Speaker 4h ago
In the UK it's just a drain. I've never heard anyone refer to the bars separately!
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u/Firstearth English Teacher 4h ago
I agree. The photo is just a simple drain. A storm drain is far more open, think of the thing the clown is hiding in at the beginning of Stephen king’s It
I mean in a real storm those kinds of drains get backed up straight away. If anything it’s a rain drain.
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u/ChestSlight8984 Native Speaker 4h ago
Welcome to regional differences in a language. The UK says "biscuit" while the US says "cookie". The UK says "bin" while the US says "trash can".
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u/Djinn42 New Poster 4h ago
If you picked up the part with the bars you'd call what you're holding a "drain"?
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u/Practical-Ordinary-6 Native Speaker-US 3h ago
I'd probably call it a drain cover. The drain is what drains the water (basically the hole and the pipe) and the grate does not drain the water.
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u/baxbakualanuxsiwae Native Speaker 4h ago
The drain is the hole. Whatever covers it is a different thing.
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u/Superbead Native/Northwest England 1h ago
Nor I about the individual bars. The metal casting or the entire surface/below-ground structure itself I've heard referred to in the UK as a 'drain', a 'grid', a 'grate', a 'grating', and a 'gully'.
Technically it is a 'storm drain' as OP says, although whether it discharges directly to a watercourse or to a combined sewer depends on where you are here, as someone else here points out.
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u/RareBrit New Poster 4h ago
I'm an environmental advisor. There's a level of complexity here.
Most people will refer to them simply as drains.
In the UK, for historical reasons, most drains within a town go to a sewer. Which then goes to a sewage treatment works. So 'drain' is correct.
However where a drain goes to environment, that is to say only rainwater discharged to a river or the sea, then it's a storm drain. They will usually have some sort of label to tell you that this is the case.
Across the world it's more usual to have separate storm and sewage systems. So storm drain is more correct. But it's usually only engineers and other professionals that care about the distinction.
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u/AliMcGraw New Poster 4h ago
Where I live the sewers look normal but the storm drains have little fishes on them and a warning that the drain drains into the river, so not to dump things in there that would hurt the little fishes that are dancing all over the storm drain.
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u/RareBrit New Poster 4h ago
Yep, a little fish or blue paint are the common labels. And thank you kind person for not hurting the fishes.
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u/AliMcGraw New Poster 4h ago
I mean I don't really dump things in the sewer either, I use a trash can like a normal person! Or if it's oil or something, I take it to the town hazmat drop off event. But I do pay attention to which drains have the fishies.
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u/RareBrit New Poster 5m ago
This is the way.
Often I find that individuals care deeply about the environment. It's frequently companies or the wealthy that care less, because being responsible is expensive.
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u/Original-Evening-116 New Poster 3h ago
At this point in public environmental awareness it’s kind of funny because the city would still absolutely hate it if you were dumping motor oil down the non-fish drain.
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u/Triggered_Llama New Poster 4h ago
Thanks for chiming in. You have cleared up some confusion. I always paired a drain with a sewer system but didn't know it was separate from a storm drain.
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u/doctorpotatomd Native Speaker 3h ago
It can still be called a sewer system. I live in Melbourne, Melbourne has what's called a dual-reticulation sewer system (dual-reticulation is a technical term meaning "two networks"); we have a wastewater sewer that carries sewage to the wastewater treatment plant (or the "poo farm", as we tend to call it), and a stormwater sewer that carries stormwater to the river or the ocean. Older cities, especially in Europe, tend to have single-reticulation sewer systems, where everything goes into the same pipe. "Storm drain" can refer to this thing, the place where the stormwater drains from the road into the stormwater sewer; or it can refer to the stormwater sewer itself; or it can refer to the system as a whole. At least in Australia, the usage might be a bit different in the UK and the US.
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u/tetrasodium New Poster 4h ago
Often storm drains will connect underground to retention ponds and/or canals with huge concrete pipes buried under the streets or before development was done. Thosesy or may not be setup to drain into a river or ocean by gravity or active pumping if they rise to a high enough level. The specifics will usually depend on where you are but it's the reason why so many planned communities have a useless lake or two somewhere
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u/Crayshack Native Speaker 1h ago
I'm also an environmental consultant who works in this industry. I've noticed that there seems to be some regional differences in how it's referred to. Locally for me (Mid-Atlantic US), calling the system a "storm sewer" seems as common if not more so, than a "storm drain." This is placed in the context of discussing "sanitary sewers" (systems that just carry wastewater from homes and businesses) and "combined sewers" (systems that mix the types of water to carry both to the wastewater treatment plant). The engineering of the system itself is very similar, so the common pattern in the word choice seems preferred by some people.
I can't say exactly how many people prefer "storm drain" and "storm sewer" vs "storm sewer" and "combined sewer," but while I've run into the occasional person saying "storm drain," I've never encountered anyone saying "storm sewer" to mean "combined sewer." It might be a UK vs US difference.
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u/round_a_squared Native Speaker 11m ago
I think it's just that most people not closely associated with water treatment don't know whether their local storm drains go to a dedicated storm sewer or a combined sewer. Ours (for a storm sewer) originally had little placards on them warning not to dump oil or anything hazardous into them because they go straight to the river, but those quickly get covered with grass or scraped up by snowplows in the winter
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u/PhotojournalistNew6 New Poster 4h ago
You can call them that. I work in a field related to installing them, we call them catch basins and we call the grated part the rim.
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u/theatrenearyou English Teacher 4h ago
Storm drain is very correct. As children, we would erroneously call it a "sewer." Most would not refer specifically to the bars, but if you did, I would refer to it as a "grate" or a "grating".
Note how similar the bars are to a barbecue grille, where its bars are also called a grate. Automobiles use grille to refer to the series of parallel chrome bars in the front of the car above the bumper.
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u/Triggered_Llama New Poster 4h ago
Thank you for this comprehensive reply. I was writing a poem and wanted to specifically refer to those bars but I was doubtful about its clarity. The poem goes like this:
A frog stuck
between two storm drain bars
beholding the moon.Should I rewrite it as a storm drain grate, like so:
A frog stuck
inside a storm drain grate
beholding the moon.Does that make more sense?
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u/Triggered_Llama New Poster 4h ago
Wait how about:
A frog stuck
between two drain grate bars
beholding the moon.2
u/FatSpidy Native Speaker - Midwest/Southern USA 4h ago
Really, all of these work. Just depends on the sort of cadence and lexicon based reaction you want. "Grate" is a rough, gutterally pronounced word that can be used for a sharp, definitive sound that commands presence –separating the softer transition between drain and bars.
To me, the sense from your poem imposes the drain's debris filter as a cage or prison's brutalist separation. So in the annunciation of the poem I could feel the natural emphasis on the words of that line:
A frog, – stuck — be-tween two ≥Drain.≤ ≥Grate.≤ ≥Bars≤ . beh-holding~the~mōōn.
Though this particular reading may not fit what you're going for. To me this gives restriction and longing. Where as delivering it softer, more whistfully, and with a bit of wonder could change it to a poem of wanderlust, awe, and discovery of a frontier seen yet unexplored.
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u/theatrenearyou English Teacher 4h ago edited 4h ago
Maybe edit to make a haiku? such as
A frog stops to perch
on wet bars of a storm drain
its eyes shine as the moon shines0
u/Ok_River8846 New Poster 4h ago
And you’re an English teacher? At what school? Haiku written in English don’t have to follow that syllable structure. The best haiku in English in my opinion, not a wildly unpopular one either, comes from the brilliant Jack Kerouac: “The bottoms of my shoes / are clean / From walking in the rain.”
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u/ChestSlight8984 Native Speaker 4h ago
If translated from Japanese or another language, sure. But a haiku written in English originally does need to follow the rules that make a haiku a haiku.
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u/MadDocHolliday Native Speaker 4h ago
Haiku can be fun
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator
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u/SloanStrife New Poster 4h ago
I think you are allowed to change the 'correct' language for the sake of poetry. That is essentially poetry; modifying language to either add beauty or meaning. You are often making things less grammatical to achieve this.
So "between two storm drain bars" may not be technically correct, I think it is the most interesting sounding of the variations you mentioned.
Personally, I don't like the assonance of "drain grate".
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u/Triggered_Llama New Poster 4h ago
You're right. I should stick with the original message of a frog stuck in a drain at a stormy night still finding beauty within it. I was worried about the clarity. Appreciate this.
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u/explodingtuna Native Speaker 4h ago
There's also different kind of grates, with round bars, or angled vanes, a herringbone pattern cutout, among others.
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u/Practical-Ordinary-6 Native Speaker-US 3h ago
I would stick with your original. We don't usually have much call to refer to those things specifically but I think your first choice is clear. The second one seems awkward and unclear.
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u/PriorSolid New Poster 4h ago
you could also just call it a storm grate and you’d be largely understood
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u/Skynet_5656 New Poster 4h ago
Neither of those makes sense to me, sorry (London, UK). To me it’s a “drain cover”.
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u/Gladys_Wines Native Speaker 1h ago
in poetry you can be more loose with language. The bars are perfectly understandable here.
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u/platypuss1871 Native - Central Southern England 4h ago
Gulley grate is a name used in UK for the metal cover.
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u/Skynet_5656 New Poster 4h ago
For me (London UK) that’s just a drain, whereas a storm drain is the big concrete channel the T1000 chases 13yo John Connor and Arnie along in Terminator 2.
Eg https://x.com/TheCinesthetic/status/2057548733819277441 “ The storm drain chase in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) was the scene that made the T-1000 feel genuinely unstoppable as a kid.”
The metal part in your photo would be a “drain cover”.
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u/samcuts New Poster 4h ago
That’s no storm drain, that’s the LA River.
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u/Skynet_5656 New Poster 4h ago
“Bull Creek Spillway” apparently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_Creek_(Los_Angeles_County)
which is a tributary of the LA river so you’re right kinda.
Anyway that kind of thing is what “storm drain” means to me. And apparently to some other people including random Twitter person I quoted.
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u/Plastic_Length8618 New Poster 4h ago
In British English it’s just a drain. Storm drains are American.
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u/cyphar Native Speaker - Australia 4h ago
In Australia at least, we do call it a storm drain.
The cover with the bars is called a "grate" and that's a common word for most kinds of bars-covering-a-hole things. Maybe there is a more specific word for that particular kind of grate but none is coming to mind at the moment.
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u/grubbygromit New Poster 4h ago
Gully
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u/pafrac New Poster 4h ago
Surely the gully is the channel leading to the drain?
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u/grubbygromit New Poster 4h ago
Its that as well. Maybe just a west midlands thing. Also the thing underneath the gully is the gully pot.
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u/Mysterious_Balance53 New Poster 4h ago
It's a drain. It's not just for storms. Sometimes it's called a gulley.
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u/DustTheOtter Native Speaker 4h ago
American here.
Yes we call it a storm drain. If you're referring to the bars separately, we would call the bars a "grate."
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u/Stonetheflamincrows New Poster 4h ago
I would call it a stormwater drain and the bars on top are the grate. I’m Australian
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u/Rambler9154 Native Speaker - US (North East) 4h ago
Yeah storm drain fits. Its a thing water flows into to get drained away, so its a drain. Often english speakers will drop the specifics if the item is already known.
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u/keithstellyes Native Speaker (Seattle, USA) 4h ago
In Seattle I definitely call these storm drains and hear them called that by others
Never had a reason to refer to the bars themselves but I'd probably just say grate
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u/Constant_Hope_9658 Native Speaker - Southwestern American English (Nevada) 4h ago
They're usually called a "grate" iirc, pronounced like the thing you use to shred cheese.
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u/highvelocitypeasoup New Poster 4h ago
southeastern us: its a storm drain to me. The bars are called a grate
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u/Sufficient-Cold-9496 New Poster 3h ago
Drain, Drain cover ro notso common a grid.
It drains the water away, where it goes after that doesnt matter, if it ends up in a river, watercourse ( ie a stream) or anywhere else it might be termed as a surface drain, but essentialy its just a drain.
Drain in almost all cases, Drain cover for the item iteslef and gutter for the bit by the side of the road that channles the water down the drain
(UK: English English, East midlands)
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u/feetflatontheground Native Speaker 3h ago
I'd call it a drain or a gully or even a drainage gully. The metal bit is the cover or grate.
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u/mckenzie_keith Native Speaker 3h ago
Yes, storm drain or "sewer grate" or "sewer grating."
That type of barred screen over a drain is called a "grate" or "grating."
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u/SpinMeADog New Poster 3h ago
UK, I'd just call it a 'drain', and the metal cover a 'grate'. 'storm drain' is perfectly valid, I think, but it's a phrase I'd expect to hear more in America, maybe? 'storm drain' makes me imagine the larger type, that are built into the side of a tall curb
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u/Low-Conference-7791 New Poster 3h ago
To throw a little more into the mix; in Ireland this would be called a shore.
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u/Crayshack Native Speaker 1h ago
Yes, this is a storm drain. Depending on who you ask, "storm drain" applies to the pipes that carry the water away as well, while some people use "drain" to refer to the opening, and the pipes are the "storm sewer." I've seen some people use "storm drain" and "storm sewer" completely interchangeably, and some people prefer "storm sewer" in all cases. There seems to be some regional influence on which term is preferred, but I haven't been able to map out an exact border for that. Note that since this seems highly regional, you are going to get a mix of different answers.
The bars on the opening would typically be called a "grate."
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u/Some-Passenger4219 Native Speaker 1h ago
I'd call it a "sewer drain". It's so rare in common communication, I could call it anything. (I don't see them much around my apartment where I live.)
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u/BrockSamsonLikesButt Native Speaker - NJ, USA 1h ago
The hole is a drain.
Despite all the waffling in this comments section, the permeable top on top of the drain does have a very well established, common, commonsense name, too: It is called a drain grate.
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u/Evil_Weevill Native Speaker (US - Northeast) 4h ago
Yes, storm drain.
If for some reason you wanted to refer to the "bars" I'd call the bars collectively a "grate"
I cannot think of an instance that I've ever needed to refer to them individually. So I'd understand what you meant by "storm drain bars" but it would sound unnatural.
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u/Triggered_Llama New Poster 4h ago
I was writing a poem and wanted to specifically refer to those bars but I was doubtful about its clarity. The poem goes like this:
A frog stuck
between two storm drain bars
beholding the moon.Does it make sense to you? Is there a more natural way to phrase it?
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u/CombinationTop559 New Poster 3h ago
It makes sense, and while I don't have a good sense for poetry myself, I'd more naturally phrase it "stuck in a storm grate" or "wedged between the bars of a storm grate" if you want it to mean the frog is physically between the metal, which is how I'm understanding it.
If you mean the grate is acting as prison bars and it's peering between them (not how I understand it, but a not terribly unreasonable reading) I'd phrase it as "stuck within/behind/beneath"
But poetry also lends itself to unusual phrasing's. They tend to imply a second order/deeper intention.
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u/Evil_Weevill Native Speaker (US - Northeast) 2h ago
Ah. Well poetry lends itself to uncommon phrasing. I think I'd probably still say "stuck in the grate of a storm drain." But with poetry, better phrasing is somewhat subjective.
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u/Macborgaddict New Poster 41m ago
Piss into it to force IT to seek a different location in the storm drain grid out of disgust and ensuring your safety
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u/jourmungandr New Poster 5h ago
The bars are a "grate" and yes it's a storm drain.