You’re goin’ street t’ 'ell fer that.
Ray
Well, mr john, looks like you posed a good question. And a perplexing one. I’ve been all over the web and to the library, and haven’t been able to find the origin of the word “street” in street ell.
Is there some way to beg Cecil to bring his great resources to bear on this?
This inquiring mind would really like to know.
BTW, you can take down that cabbage plant from over your door. I’m not the vengeful type. “What goes around, comes around.” is my credo. 
Peace,
mangeorge
Wasn’t that a C/W song ?“Take the cabbage from your door,let it bang among the boulders…” yeh it’s an ell of a puzzler.
Sure you can use it out at the street main but seems then it would be a ‘main ell’,ask any body on Main Street.
that hot water hose was really goin around. I got a cross connection over the door now.Don’t tell the plumbing inspector.
Considering the importance of this question, perhaps you can get a federal grant to support your research in finding its answer.
Ray (Probably was named after an hermaphroditic street person named Elwood.)
I don’t think we have enough citaions here. Some one go get something from nuclear physics, I’ll go to sports, and somebody else go to poetry.
CEEECIIILLLL!!!
HELLLLP!!!
I’ll buy your freakin’ books! And a coffee mug!
Please, just answer this one question.
Peace,
mangeorge
I thought i was obssesed. I been living with this question for years and i am perfectly normal.Aieeeee! Get um off me! Street ells ! street ells! Right Threaded street ells!get um off ! get um off!
::trying to hide the fact that this is a blatant bump to avoid the current board purge::
I’ve asked 5 plumbers, called every plumbing supplier in the yellow pages, and pleaded with my 80-year old ex-plumber uncle for the answer to this question. The only answer I’ve gotten is “Oh, that’s a street ell. It’s always been a street ell.”
I refuse to die not knowing why!!!
Oh, and mr john, If you’re here, DAMN YOU for bringing this up in the first place.
Damn me? This thing has been quiescent here for 8 months and you bring it up again! I coulda saved you some time, my experience with " experts" has been the same as yours, or even worse,with master plumbers taking lots of time to explain, making sure i understand exactly WHAT a street ell is. Sometimes I can never get across that I am asking WHY. Oddly enuff I just used a street ell,yesterday to move an outside hydrant.( coincedence? Now I wonder.)I had last installed it following the " I’ll use what ever I got in the bucket" school of plumbing rather than the " buy what I need" school. There was a coupling close to where I wanted to turn so I left it on there and screwed in a street ell, it was a good hundred feet from the nearest street. I held the ell in my hand a moment, didn’t even think out the whole question ,just " Well, there’s this again" and screwed it in. I guess it is like that great ode to plumbing, " Charge of the Bucket Brigade." Theirs not to reason why,Theirs but to drip and dry"
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx
Damn both of you! Couldn’t let a “Sleeping dog lie”, could you?
Well, at least we can take solice in the fact that Cecil doesn’t know, either. 
I still think it’s called that because when you screw it on a pipe, you go “straight” from male threads to male threads.
Peace,
mangeorge
Teach your kids to bungee jump.
One them might have to cross a bridge someday.
I’ve been a pipefitter for 5 years, and everyone I’ve talked to has said the same thing. They don’t know how the term came to being.
Hand me that wrench. No, the one that looks like a hammer.
Sig Courtesy of Walley
Thank you pipefittter! See I ain’t nuts. Well, maybe so for obsessing over this. Man, I ain’t never gonna argue with nobodies dad, but if there is a fitting that replaces a reducer and a nipple , that would be a “straight”. Street els are also called service els, and UNION els. I can see service= street, sorta. As for union, is there a connection to a coupling union? I don’t see it. I would think the unions would want the more complicated time consuming approach. BTW el is the abbreviation, it is for elbow not the letter, not all els look like the letter. I have even heard a guy use the term Y el. Els make great pirate guns, we used to go out to Dad’s shed, get an el, a close nipple in one end for a handle,a longer nipple or even a pipe in the other for a barrel. Avast me hearties. When the other guys captured and disarmed me, just before I walked off the plank I would reach in my pocket and pull out a street el, " Yarrrr, ye didn’t know I had me derringer, ey?"
“Pardon me while I have a strange interlude.”-Marx