Jump to content

valley

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary
See also: Valley

English

[edit]
English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
 valley on Wikipedia
The Newlands Valley (UK)

Etymology

[edit]

From Middle English valey, valeye, from Anglo-Norman valey, Old French valee (compare French vallée), from Latin vallēs/vallis. Doublet of vlei and vly. Displaced native dene, from dene and partially displaced native dale, from dæl.

Pronunciation

[edit]

Noun

[edit]

valley (plural valleys or (obsolete) vallies)

  1. An elongated depression cast between hills or mountains, often with a river flowing through it.
    Synonyms: dale, (poetic) vale; see also Thesaurus:valley
    The Indus River valley was the site of an ancient civilization.
    • 1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 144:
      [I]t sank down through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather liquid than gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the valleys and ditches and water-courses even as I have heard the carbonic acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do.
    • 1968, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, volumes 11-14, page vi:
      The El Dorado-Searchlight area is geologically a north-south trending orogenous zone, paralleled on the east by the valley of the Colorado, and by an alluvial valley on the west.
    • 2013 August 16, John Vidal, “Dams endanger ecology of Himalayas”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 10, page 8:
      Most of the Himalayan rivers have been relatively untouched by dams near their sources. Now the two great Asian powers, India and China, are rushing to harness them as they cut through some of the world's deepest valleys.
  2. An area which drains itself into a river.
  3. Any structure resembling one, e.g. the interior angle formed by the intersection of two sloping roof planes.

Antonyms

[edit]

Hyponyms

[edit]

Derived terms

[edit]
[edit]

Translations

[edit]

Verb

[edit]

valley (third-person singular simple present valleys, present participle valleying, simple past and past participle valleyed)

  1. (intransitive, poetic, rare) To form the shape of a valley.

References

[edit]

Anagrams

[edit]

Manx

[edit]

Noun

[edit]

valley

  1. Lenited form of balley.