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river
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
river
noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
a river valley
▪ The route passes through beautiful wooded river valleys.
an ocean/sea/river current
▪ Ocean currents carry young fish out to sea.
cross (over) the road/street/river etc
▪ It’s easy to have an accident just crossing the road.
▪ He was hit by a car when he tried to cross over the road near Euston station.
divert a river/footpath/road etc
▪ Canals divert water from the Truckee River into the lake.
polluted air/water/rivers etc
▪ The project’s aim is to clean up polluted land.
river basin
river bed
river/sea fish
▪ Pike are river fish.
the sea/river bottom
▪ fish living on the sea bottom
water/river pollution
▪ The National Rivers Authority tests levels of water pollution.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
great
▪ Next, the region became the delta of a great river.
▪ Nuln is the second biggest city of the Reikland and like Altdorf it sits astride the great river Reik.
▪ The Oceanids, the nymphs of this great river, were their daughters.
▪ He opened the door of a big airy room with views down to the great river itself.
▪ Round about Grace herself the great river deposited little but mounds of plastic containers.
▪ How much greater is the river flow in January compared with that in June?
■ NOUN
bank
▪ She went for him now, on the grassy river bank, surprising staider strolling couples.
▪ It started a fire which spread to the river bank.
▪ But the best place was the river bank.
▪ They built their homes out of the materials of the river bank itself.
▪ For example, mink have been radio-tracked along river banks inside major cities.
▪ It will include development of canal and river banks and extensive landscaping.
▪ Cross the stones then turn left to walk along the river bank.
▪ After the attack another lorry driver saw a man of the same height scrambling away from the river bank.
basin
▪ A considerable amount of time and money has been spent in pursuing the study of river basin dynamics.
▪ In the early 1940s, the Bureau devised the plan of considering an entire river basin as an integrated project.
▪ The results from the model can be used to answer questions relating to the long-term behaviour of the river basin.
▪ Another use of the simulation model might be to assess the effect of increasing the urban area lying within a river basin.
▪ The river basin is a well-defined spatial unit that is of great interest to hydrologists, geomorphologists and geographers.
bed
▪ A particularly interesting feature of the trestle piers was the method used for founding them on irregular river beds.
▪ These species do not grow in association with Lagenandra and Hygrophila because they do not occur in river beds.
▪ By 1803 the river beds, in some parts of the city, were two or three metres above the city.
▪ The cryptocorynes occur mainly in cultures of single species on overgrown river beds and are exposed to the conditions of amphibious life.
▪ It was thus possible to assemble a bridge pier and lower it complete on to the river bed.
▪ The entrepreneur made a million dollars out of Pet Rocks-rocks that you could find in any river bed.
▪ To my astonishment I find that we use the river bed as a road.
▪ By proceeding a little further, a scrambling descent to the river bed may be made.
mouth
▪ At Pevensey, reclamation of the adjacent estuary had reduced tidal scouring, which had previously kept the river mouth open.
▪ On Romney Marsh, silting of river mouths was worsened by the problem of peat shrinkage.
▪ On the other hand, once clear of the river mouth, he could sail a clear reach for Key Canaka.
▪ Trent believed that they were less than two miles from the river mouth.
▪ It seems unlikely that 69 could be taken to include river mouths.
▪ Visualising the chart, he calculated the distance to the Makaa river mouth at about twelve miles.
system
▪ Six species of fish are found only in the Mamberamo river system.
▪ The principal river systems and their major tributaries are described below.
▪ In tracing characteristic source-specific sub-populations of sediment passing through a river system the closest possible spacing of sieves may be required.
▪ The park was formed to preserve for ever the spectacular countryside, lakes and river systems created in the wake of the glacier.
▪ There were obvious oxbow lakes and many river systems.
▪ It exists only in the river systems of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra.
valley
▪ All records are for the river valleys, levels, or the coast.
▪ As the climate gradually became cooler and more moist, humans again moved in, usually following river valleys.
▪ The city of Belfast has a magnificent setting, ringed by high hills, sea lough and river valley.
▪ The truck roared and ripped down the last descent to the river valley.
▪ In most cases these are agricultural groups clinging to river valleys where water and nutrient rich soils are plentiful.
▪ Around the coast and in river valleys there are stretches of tropical jungle with pythons and other snakes.
▪ Nowhere up ahead did I see anything that looked like a river valley.
■ VERB
cross
▪ Chariots can not move over obstacles or difficult terrain except to cross a river at a bridge or ford.
▪ They immediately crossed the river and fired several houses in the village of DeSoto, so as to illuminate the river.
▪ The Earl Siward and his Northumbrian army have crossed the river Tweed.
▪ Her three children she had already packed into a wagonload of others in a caravan of Negroes crossing the river.
▪ How was she to cross the river?
▪ Did you see the truck that was crossing the river and crashed through the ice?
▪ Follow the south shore, crossing the river where it is shallow enough.
▪ Carrying a child on his shoulders, he also crossed a billowing river on his knees.
flow
▪ The clean water can then flow back into the river.
▪ The streets flowed with rivers of women dressed in their plain black dresses, all on their way to work.
▪ Enjoy flowing with the river for as long as you wish - then gently come back to the room.
▪ Ejected from our bodies, the spirit flows out on the river of blood, losing its name and its place.
▪ The chemical effluent from the process flows untreated into the rivers.
▪ The mine was shut down last August after a spill of polluted water from a waste pond flowed into a nearby river.
follow
▪ The Clyde cycleway provides a traffic-free route from Glasgow centre and follows the river Clyde to its source.
▪ As the climate gradually became cooler and more moist, humans again moved in, usually following river valleys.
▪ We were deployed to follow the river.
▪ They followed rivers for convenience, then struck out in a straight line, bisecting mountain ranges, cutting watersheds in half.
▪ Then follow the river to Mertoun Bridge.
▪ And because the railroads often followed river valleys, not many homestead acres lay in well-watered bottomlands.
pollute
▪ It says that the company razed forests, polluted rivers, retarded crop growth and caused birth defects.
▪ Businesses that polluted the river were fined.
▪ Transnational oil and mining companies pollute rivers and finance grossly disruptive mines.
▪ The River Doe Lea is much more polluted than all other rivers in the area.
▪ Water rising through abandoned mines could pollute rivers, kill wildlife and contaminate drinking water.
run
▪ Mr Camdessus, the blood is so much, you know, it runs in rivers.
▪ Shadows ran down like rivers from the airy uplands, filling the depths with a gathering chill.
▪ Wally walked me over to the steel pipes running horizontally along the river side of the promenade.
▪ The Dvortsovaya runs along the Neva river and in front of the State Hermitage.
▪ All that snow in New Hampshire is running for the river.
▪ Far below, leaves blew across the concourse, piling against the railings which ran beside an inhospitable river Thames.
▪ They say we need more rain because most of the downpour will run down the rivers to the sea.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
drag a lake/river etc
▪ Police were still dragging lakes all over the Catskills.
sell sb down the river
▪ The workers were promised that they would not lose their jobs as a result of the merger. Later they found out that they had been sold down the river.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A passenger sitting next to me flung a coin into the river with great enthusiasm.
▪ He lit one of his Gauloise cigarettes, sat back in his chair, and stared at the river in silence.
▪ In the dry season, the wonderfully cool river water is a stunning blue-green in the deep pools below the falls.
▪ The river was dangerous here, still gnawing at the rim of the path.
▪ The other rivers from the Pennines are roughly the same size.
▪ The toll includes drowned livestock, ruined wheat crops and boats torn from their moorings on rivers around the north state.
▪ Transnational oil and mining companies pollute rivers and finance grossly disruptive mines.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
River

River \Riv"er\, v. i. To hawk by the side of a river; to fly hawks at river fowl. [Obs.]
--Halliwell.

River

River \Riv"er\, n. One who rives or splits.

River

River \Riv"er\, n. [F. riv[`e]re a river, LL. riparia river, bank of a river, fr. L. riparius belonging to a bank or shore, fr. ripa a bank or shore; of uncertain origin. Cf. Arrive, Riparian.]

  1. A large stream of water flowing in a bed or channel and emptying into the ocean, a sea, a lake, or another stream; a stream larger than a rivulet or brook.

    Transparent and sparkling rivers, from which it is delightful to drink as they flow.
    --Macaulay.

  2. Fig.: A large stream; copious flow; abundance; as, rivers of blood; rivers of oil. River chub (Zo["o]l.), the hornyhead and allied species of fresh-water fishes. River crab (Zo["o]l.), any species of fresh-water crabs of the genus Thelphusa, as Thelphusa depressa of Southern Europe. River dragon, a crocodile; -- applied by Milton to the king of Egypt. River driver, a lumberman who drives or conducts logs down rivers. --Bartlett. River duck (Zo["o]l.), any species of duck belonging to Anas, Spatula, and allied genera, in which the hind toe is destitute of a membranous lobe, as in the mallard and pintail; -- opposed to sea duck. River god, a deity supposed to preside over a river as its tutelary divinity. River herring (Zo["o]l.), an alewife. River hog. (Zo["o]l.)

    1. Any species of African wild hogs of the genus Potamoch[oe]rus. They frequent wet places along the rivers.

    2. The capybara.

      River horse (Zo["o]l.), the hippopotamus.

      River jack (Zo["o]l.), an African puff adder ( Clotho nasicornis) having a spine on the nose.

      River limpet (Zo["o]l.), a fresh-water, air-breathing mollusk of the genus Ancylus, having a limpet-shaped shell.

      River pirate (Zo["o]l.), the pike.

      River snail (Zo["o]l.), any species of fresh-water gastropods of Paludina, Melontho, and allied genera. See Pond snail, under Pond.

      River tortoise (Zo["o]l.), any one of numerous fresh-water tortoises inhabiting rivers, especially those of the genus Trionyx and allied genera. See Trionyx.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
river

early 13c., from Anglo-French rivere, Old French riviere "river, riverside, river bank" (12c.), from Vulgar Latin *riparia "riverbank, seashore, river" (source also of Spanish ribera, Italian riviera), noun use of fem. of Latin riparius "of a riverbank" (see riparian). Generalized sense of "a copious flow" of anything is from late 14c. The Old English word was ea "river," cognate with Gothic ahwa, Latin aqua (see aqua-). Romanic cognate words tend to retain the sense "river bank" as the main one, or else the secondary Latin sense "coast of the sea" (compare Riviera).\n

\nU.S. slang phrase up the river "in prison" (1891) is originally in reference to Sing Sing prison, which was literally "up the (Hudson) river" from New York City. Phrase down the river "done for, finished" perhaps echoes sense in sell down the river (1851), originally of troublesome slaves, to sell from the Upper South to the harsher cotton plantations of the Deep South.

Wiktionary
river

Etymology 1 n. A large and often winding stream which drains a land mass, carrying water down from higher areas to a lower point, ending at an ocean or in an inland se

  1. v

  2. (context poker English) To improve one’s hand to beat another player on the final card in a poker game. Etymology 2

    n. One who rives or splits.

WordNet
river

n. a large natural stream of water (larger than a creek); "the river was navigable for 50 miles"

Gazetteer
Wikipedia
River (disambiguation)

A river is a flowing body of water.

River or Rivers may also refer to:

River (Joni Mitchell song)

"River" is a song by Joni Mitchell, from her 1971 album Blue. Although never released as a single, it has become one of Mitchell's most covered songs.

River (album)

River is the fourth studio album by former Guns N' Roses guitarist Izzy Stradlin. It is the third album to feature ex- Guns N' Roses bass guitarist Duff Mckagan

River (Barking and Dagenham ward)

River ward is a political division returning three Councillors to the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. Elected representation is by Inder Singh Jamu, Liam Smith, and Patricia Twomey, all of the Labour Party (UK).

River (AKB48 song)

"River" is the 14th major single by the Japanese idol group AKB48, released on 21 October 2009. It was the first AKB48's single to top the Oricon weekly singles chart, having sold 179,000 copies in its first week. Thus it became the group's best selling single, beating " Namida Surprise!", which by then had sold 144,000 copies in 18 weeks.

River (2011 film)

is a 2011 Japanese drama film based on the 2008 Akihabara massacre incident. The film is written and directed by Ryūichi Hiroki. The film stars actress Misako Renbutsu, who will play the role of a person who lost her love interest in the attacks.

River debuted at the 12th Tokyo Filmex as one of its special presentations. It will subsequently be released in Japanese cinemas on 10 March 2012.

River (TV series)

River is a six-part British television drama series, created and written by Abi Morgan and starring Stellan Skarsgård and Nicola Walker. It premiered on BBC One on 13 October 2015, and internationally on Netflix on 18 November 2015.

River (2015 film)

River is a Canadian thriller film directed by Jamie M. Dagg. It premiered in the Discovery section of the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival. Sutherland garnered a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Actor at the 4th Canadian Screen Awards. The film was chosen as the winner of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television's Claude Jutra Award, as the year's best feature film directed by a first-time director.

River (typography)

In typography, rivers, or rivers of white, are gaps in typesetting, which appear to run through a paragraph of text, due to a coincidental alignment of spaces. The rivers can occur regardless of the spacing settings, but are most noticeable with wide inter-word spaces caused by full text justification or monospaced fonts. Rivers are less noticeable with proportional fonts, due to narrow spacing. Another cause of rivers is the close repetition of a long word or similar words at regular intervals, such as "maximization" with "minimization" or "optimization".

Rivers occur because of a combination of the x-height of the typeface (whether the type appears broad or skinny), the values assigned to the widths of various characters, and the degree of control over character spacing and word spacing. Broader typefaces are more prone to exhibit rivers, as are the less sophisticated typesetting applications that offer little control over spacing. Increased sentence spacing can also exaggerate the river effect. More sophisticated typesetting applications divide individual characters into larger numbers, giving more numerical control. They also offer more comprehensive libraries of "kerning pairs" that tell the application how much space to allow between all possible combinations of letter pairs.

Typographers try to minimize or eliminate the river effect. In Finer Points in the Spacing & Arrangement of Type, Canadian typographer Geoffrey Dowding explains as follows.

A carefully composed text page appears as an orderly series of strips of black separated by horizontal channels of white space. Conversely, in a slovenly setting the tendency is for the page to appear as a grey and muddled pattern of isolated spats, this effect being caused by the over-widely separated words. The normal, easy, left-to-right movement of the eye is slowed down simply because of this separation; further, the short letters and serifs are unable to discharge an important function—that of keeping the eye on "the line". The eye also tends to be confused by a feeling of vertical emphasis, that is, an up & down movement, induced by the relative isolation of the words & consequent insistence of the ascending and descending letters. This movement is further emphasized by those "rivers" of white which are the inseparable & ugly accompaniment of all carelessly set text matter.

Typographers can test for rivers by turning a proof sheet upside down (top to bottom) to examine the text. From this perspective, the eye is less likely to recognize words and the type can be viewed more readily as an overall pattern.

Other related terms are lakes and holes, which refer to a cluster of adjacent or intertwined rivers that create a lighter area within a block of type.

River

A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of water. Small rivers can be referred to using names such as stream, creek, brook, rivulet, and rill. There are no official definitions for the generic term river as applied to geographic features, although in some countries or communities a stream is defined by its size. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location; examples are "run" in some parts of the United States, " burn" in Scotland and northeast England, and "beck" in northern England. Sometimes a river is defined as being larger than a creek, but not always: the language is vague.

Rivers are part of the hydrological cycle. Water generally collects in a river from precipitation through a drainage basin from surface runoff and other sources such as groundwater recharge, springs, and the release of stored water in natural ice and snowpacks (e.g. from glaciers). Potamology is the scientific study of rivers while limnology is the study of inland waters in general.

Extraterrestrial rivers of liquid hydrocarbons have recently been found on Titan. Channels may indicate past rivers on other planets, specifically outflow channels on Mars and rivers are theorised to exist on planets and moons in habitable zones of stars.

River (2015 Tibetan film)

River is the 2015 film, by the director Sonthar Gyal. The film was shown to a great fanfare during 19th Shanghai International Film Festival in China.

Usage examples of "river".

This illustration is not intended to apply to the older bridges with widely distended masses, which render each pier sufficient to abut the arches springing from it, but tend, in providing for a way over the river, to choke up the way by the river itself, or to compel the river either to throw down the structure or else to destroy its own banks.

Republican Palace and the complex of government buildings and luxury villas that abutted the Tigris River, thus seizing the administrative heart of the capital.

Each chain over a shore span consists of two segments, the longer attached to the tie at the top of the river tower, the shorter to the link at the top of the abutment tower, and the two jointed together at the lowest point.

Two main towers in the river and two towers on the shore abutments carry the suspension chains.

February 20, Garner convened two days of closed-door meetings in a packed amphitheater at Fort McNair, the stately home of the National Defense University, abutting the Potomac River in Washington.

The city was accessible only by a narrow peninsula towards the west, as the other three sides were surrounded by the Adige, a rapid river, which covered the province of Venetia, from whence the besieged derived an inexhaustible supply of men and provisions.

Their skilful guide, changing his plan of operations, then conducted the army by a longer circuit, but through a fertile territory, towards the head of the Euphrates, where the infant river is reduced to a shallow and accessible stream.

The latter of those mighty streams, which rises at the distance of only thirty miles from the former, flows above thirteen hundred miles, for the most part to the south-east, collects the tribute of sixty navigable rivers, and is, at length, through six mouths, received into the Euxine, which appears scarcely equal to such an accession of waters.

When he was ready to break camp, Ace decided to ride along the river until he came to a fur post.

There is also the resemblance of the plan of the city to the blade of such a knife, the curve of the defile corresponding to the curve of the blade, the River Acis to the central rib, Acies Castle to the point, and the Capulus to the line at which the steel vanishes into the haft.

It felt better to wear out my frustrations by the use of my legs, and so I resolved to follow the capering street to the top if need be and see the Vincula and Acies Castle from that height, and then to show my badge of office to the guards at the fortifications there and walk along them to the Capulus and so cross the river by the lowest way.

He had ridden out with her once in the first week, and seemed to take pride in showing her the acreage belonging to the plantation, the fields in cane and food crops, the lay of the lands along the river.

Beyond the last-mentioned river, Edessa was distinguished by a firm and early adherence to the faith.

His formidable host, when it was drawn out in order of battle, covered the banks of the river, the adjacent heights, and the whole extent of a plain of above twelve miles, which separated the two armies.

At the stated season of the melting of the snows in Armenia, the River Mygdonius, which divides the plain and the city of Nisibis, forms, like the Nile, an inundation over the adjacent country.