Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A deep gully cut by an intermittent stream; a dry gulch.
- n. A brook; a creek.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A watercourse; a rivulet. Also arrollo.
Wiktionary
- n. A dry creek or stream bed, a gulch which temporarily or seasonally fills and flows (after sufficient rain).
- n. Any water course; any rivulet (whether it flows year-round or only seasonally).
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A water course; a rivulet.
- n. Western U. S. The dry bed of a small stream.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a stream or brook
Etymologies
- From Spanish arroyo. (Wiktionary)
- Spanish, from Vulgar Latin *arrugius, gold mine, underground passage, variant of Latin arrugia, a galleried mine. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The word arroyo has appeared in one New York Times article in the past year, on Jan. 1 in the Scientist at Work blog post "The Sun, the Moon and the Quail" by Jennifer Gee:”
“Learn more about the word "arroyo" and see usage examples across a range of subjects on the Vocabulary.com dictionary.”
“Finally, the arroyo is too strong and takes the taxi away.”
Global Voices in English » Colombia: Living with Flooding in Barranquilla
“Lots of people living along the main arroyo have lost everything and I think some folks are still missing - very sad, it is such a lovely little town.”
“An arroyo is a deep dry ditch in dry weather; but whenever it rains the water rushes down the arroyo and makes it a deep river.”
“It is surmised that the very name Guadalupe has its origins in the Arabic wadi lupe, that is, an arroyo of dark sand.”
The Huffington Post: Susan J. Cobb: The Inner Virgin Comes Out In Revolution
“And if you're near anywhere that's near a creek, stream or any kind of a dry arroyo, which is a wash, basically, in Texas, a dry wash, you just need to be up and out of that area, because you can see just some of the rainfall, some of the rainfall rates in that red right there.”
“But in 1846, when the lieutenant was here, the arroyo was a creek, too.”
“The little creek called the arroyo Guaraguano, emptying into the Mao from the southwest at Hato Viejo, has cut a section in these beds more marked than that on the Mao.”
Internet Archive: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society
“Portuguese 'I learned that "arroyo" was "arrogo" in my Portuguese class, even though it sounded wrong to me.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘arroyo’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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250 Extra Spelling Words
Some more words for intermediate and advanced spellers.
cultellarius, barouche, palanquin, badelaire, cavetto, tregetour, tergiversate, rhododendron, rhadamanthine, thyrsus, cappelletti, bradycardia and 238 more...
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Water always flows downhill
The path of least resistance, watercourses, plumbing....
swale, hollow, creek, crick, depression, holler, draw, ditch, corrie, cwm, continental divide, stream and 89 more...
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Interesting words
A list of words that are odd or words that I have looked up.
concupiscence, brize, scree, scoria, forestaff, spanaemia, valetudinarianism, distasture, pyrethrum, laudanum, gentian, bicameral and 11184 more...
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Ar!
ar, Ar, argon, are, area, arf, arc, ark, aardwolf, aardvark, aardcucumber, yardarm and 253 more...
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Landforms
A Cyclopedia of Landforms.
plain, mountain, canyon, cliff, hill, arch, cave, plateau, mesa, butte, chimney, peneplain and 169 more...
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Written on Water
An eclectic list of words pertaining to and describing water.
"...I am the faithful husband of the rain,
I love the water of wells and springs
and the taste of roofs in the...water, rain, cistern, thirst, dead-water, eddy-water, surge, flood, ebb, fluid, flow, liquor amnii and 202 more...
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Desert ingredients
dune, sand, wind, cactus, wadi, oasis, gibber, barchan, bilby, arroyo, mirage, heat and 59 more...
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Tricky Words from Spanish
Loanwords from Spanish -- some established, others more wet behind the ears -- that are difficult to spell, pronounce, or remember.
chipotle, temblor, olla podrida, arroyo, stevedore, guacamole, vaquero, serape, calaboose, Popocatépetl, jalapeño, maquiladora and 4 more...
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Just 'cause I like 'em, A
abaculus, abacus, abaft, abarticular, abbreviate, abeyance, abiding, anthocyanin, antemeridian, arcane, adjure, adduce and 418 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
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GRE 3500
abase, abash, abate, aberrant, abeyance, abjure, ablution, abut, accede, accentuate, acerbity, acetic and 133 more...
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Learned
ambergris, andiron, aphelion, austral, bellicose, boreal, bravura, chaff, chicanery, creditable, credulous, decamp and 223 more...
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inkhorn's Words
inkhorn, aplomb, apotheosis, asinine, avatar, bombastic, boorish, bromide, bucolic, cagey, canvass, digress and 991 more...
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Vocab
Words that I come across, and go blank, or want to clarify.
nefarious, edifice, malevolent, ostensible, folderol, bauble, livid, amnesty, calculus, saddlery, maisonette, cuisse and 423 more...
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the earth
Planetary chaos: terrain, landscape and geology excluding rocks. (See "the geologist" list for the latter.)
butte, karst, caldera, mesa, laccolith, cwm, crater, alp, precipice, sierra, badlands, prairie and 122 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for arroyo.

ruzuzu From the examples:
“It is surmised that the very name Guadalupe has its origins in the Arabic wadi lupe, that is, an arroyo of dark sand.”
--The Huffington Post: Susan J. Cobb: The Inner Virgin Comes Out In Revolution
May 23, 2012
Casey "Her eyes moved from side to side in small, shooting peeks. Scraggle-headed and tremble-mouthed, she looked like a diseased coyote driven into its final arroyo." From Wizard and Glass by Stephen King. Jan 28, 2011
yarb The hills were huge rolling hummocks of bare ground, covered only by wild oats. At long intervals, were isolated live oaks. In the canyons and arroyos, the chaparral and manzanita grew in dark olive-green thickets. The ground was honey-combed with gopher-holes, and the gophers themselves were everywhere. Occasionally a jack rabbit bounded across the open, from one growth of chaparral to another, taking long leaps, his ears erect. High overhead, a hawk or two swung at anchor, and once, with a startling rush of wings, a covey of quail flushed from the brush at the side of the trail.
- Frank Norris, The Octopus, bk 2, ch. 3 Aug 26, 2008