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Hi, everyone. And welcome back to one of your favorite segments【词源考古研究所】, It Means What?

Hi, 安澜.

Hi, Lulu. Hi, everyone.

So what are we gonna talk about today?

First I wanna ask you a question, okay,

what would you do if you clogged your toilet?

Clogged my toilet? What are you talking about? I never clog my toilet. I'm a lady. 

Really? 

Okay. If I accidentally clog my toilet, I would use a plunger. I would use any method to try to unclog it.

But what if you can't? I'll call someone, I'll call a guy. Are we talking about plumber today就是水管管道工?

So we're gonna talk about the word. Plumber or plumbing

Plumbing is a word... I would assume the origin of this word has something to do with pipes because你说水管，我们说上下水管道工。

No, it comes from Latin “plumbum”, means lead.

Lead铅, 这个词在它作为金属的时候, 它读lead[led]，在作为引导的时候它读lead[li:d]. Here is lead[led], was it because the original pipes, water pipes they were made of lead?  

Exactly. So the Romans were famous for their plumbing. They were famous for their water supplies and their aqueducts.

Yes, the aqueducts are those things that you use to transport water.

And the Romans use lead to make the pipes.

Isn't that a bit dangerous?

Yes, it is. The problem is that lead is highly poisonous,

对, 铅就是特别有毒的.

Yes. The problem is that nobody realized that lead was that dangerous. So some scholars actually think the reason why the Roman empire fell is because of lead poisoning.

I guess a lot of these things that we now know to be highly dangerous, they were found out because people died from it,  (exactly) massive amount of people died from it.

So some people think that if you read Roman history, there's lots of people who are a little bit crazy or a little bit of eccentric or do very weird things. Some people have suggested that actually that could have been partly lead poisoning because lead poisoning does actually make you slightly erratic. It does affect your nervous system.

It's heavy metal poisoning, exactly.  It's like in Chinese history there's a lot of because of all the 炼丹, there's a lot of mercury poisoning.