wells
n. countablen. deep holes in the ground that people use to get water, oil, or gas. You usually find them in places where there is no city water system.
n. shafts or holes sunk into the earth to obtain water, oil, gas, or brine. Often used in plural to refer to the infrastructure of a specific site or the general source of a resource.
The village gets all its drinking water from two deep wells.
After the drought began, many farmers had to dig deeper wells to reach the dropping water table.
The discovery of several high-pressure oil wells in the region transformed the local economy from subsistence farming to industrial energy production within a single decade.
From Old English wella, genitive plural of well (“spring”), in reference to a residence near a group of springs. The original use of the genitive case here would've indicated origin. The -s ending of the modern form would be added later on upon reanalysis after the breakdown of the case system (outside of pronouns) that occurred in the development of English.
Commonly used with the verbs 'dig', 'drill', or 'sink'.