Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Of, on, or relating to the banks of a natural course of water.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Pertaining to or situated on the bank of a river.
- In anatomy, of or pertaining to a ripa of the brain; marginal, as a part of the brain.
- n. One who dwells or owns property on the banks of a river.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Of or pertaining to the bank of a river.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. of or relating to or located on the banks of a river or stream
Etymologies
- From Latin rīpārius ("relating to a riverbank") + -an. (Wiktionary)
- From Latin rīpārius, from rīpa, bank. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“This land, often called a riparian buffer, can play a vital role in preventing nutrients that wash off fields and streets from reaching the rivers and coasts.”
“Yesterday's term was riparian, which is defined as:”
“Realising the importance of water to ensure productivity of the land, the colonial powers instituted the Water law in 1936, which gave Water rights to land owners - what was known as the riparian rights.”
WOMEN CELEBRATING A DECADE OF FREEDOM ON THE PATH TO TOTAL EMANCIPATION: WOMEN, LAND AND WATER
“In the areas adjacent to the river, called the riparian zone, vegetation suffers because of infestation by alien plants.”
“Almost 75 percent of the watershed can be classified as riparian”
“The first way is called the riparian zone, which is the”
“Survey groundwater geochemist Don Whittemore and geohydrologist Jim Butler, working with researchers from the University of Iowa and University of Colorado, will look for fluctuations in the river's stream flow and in soil moisture and groundwater levels in the area abutting the river known as the riparian zone.”
“The ecosystem approach can provide a framework for developing practices, such as riparian buffer systems, to both support biodiversity conservation, and assist in water management and purification.”
“Water rights are termed in law "riparian" rights, and land is riparian only when water flows over it or along its borders.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘riparian’.
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250 Cherry-Picked Words
Juicy words for the intermediate and advanced speller
consomme, miniaceous, nankeen, smaragdine, stramineous, vitellary, allemande, beguine, bransle, charabanc, margaritaceous, chaconne and 238 more...
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phrontistery-r
from phrontistery.info
raad, rabanna, rabbet, rabble, Rabelaisian, rabic, racemation, raceme, racemiferous, rach, rachidian, rachiometer and 514 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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January 2012
bloviate, pastiche, apparat, facile, paroxysm, pique, bedfellow, pedigree, tutelage, protege, protégé, retroactive and 196 more...
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cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 503 more...
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Earth-Friendly Organic Produce
An Ecosystem of earth/life-related words.
blueskycloudform, sojourn, reuse, reduce, compostable, habitat, ecology, bionomics, Eco-Art, sustainability, forest garden, biosystems and 47 more...
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Verecund, flivver, etc
Just some words I happen to enjoy. Some thread-worn, some not.
yegg, yob, verecund, amatory, fermata, threepenny, gruntled, flivver, gamboge, decolletage, ordure, nudnik and 173 more...
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dharma66's list
words that pique my interest either by meaning, pronunciation, or spelling, and words that otherwise tickle my fancy!!
pique, elusive, serendipity, nefarious, redundant, pseudoscientific, obsequious, flack, quandary, impervious, perchance, translucent and 168 more...
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Dictionary.com Words of the Days of 1999
1999 · 2000 · 2001 · 2002 · 2003 · 2004 · 2005 · 2006 · 2007 · 2008
emolument, palindrome, deprecate, bivouac, umbrage, incipient, dapple, pugnacious, capitulate, susurrus, thaumaturgy, capacious and 229 more...
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When In Entropic~al English Locales.....
Care about your social environment? Save these endangered words from extinction... don't delay, adopt an out~of~date adjective today!
englishable, toesmithing, zwimmer, woad, wherefore, bobance, pediluvium, ruff, anteloquy, februation, lungeous, chalm and 357 more...
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Awesome Words, Part 2: More Common
pilgrim, indubitably, incorrigible, bombastic, histrionics, depredation, perspicuity, discombobulate, peregrination, ambulatory, redux, fractious and 164 more...
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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kewpid's Words
moleskine, araldite, dessicate, cellar door, grotesque, fallacy, vendetta, raindrop, panacea, ethereal, hircus, treppenwitz and 446 more...
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The Collection
A somewhat discriminatory list of words and phrases collected for their euphonic or arcane appeal, interesting etymology, or concise definition of an otherwise unnamed phenomenon or concept.
ziggurat, neophilia, sucker punch, soporific, epoch, tundra, fiat, idiotproof, miscellany, metaphysics, cryptozoology, dysphoria and 850 more...
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GRE
acrimony, verisimilitude, tenebrious, tenebrous, dishabille, unfettered, deplorable, woebegone, credulity, naïveté, mitigate, meliorate and 475 more...
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C. S. Bird – Grandiloquent Dictionary
All the words from the Grandiloquent Dictionary.
946 of these 2700 words do not yield any results in six different dictionaries, hence many of them might be misspellings.
More in...abacinate, abcedarian, abderian, ablegate, abligurition, ablutophobia, abnormous, acarophobia, acathasia, accipitrine, accidia, accubitus and 2690 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for riparian.
missanthropist Pertaining to the bank or banks of a river. May 16, 2008
reesetee Well, they ought to have just renamed the river then, don't you think? Aug 31, 2007
jennarenn I wrote a rather embarassing paper in college where I confused the generic term "riparian" with the name of a local river, the Rapidan. Aug 31, 2007
reesetee Indeed! :-) Aug 30, 2007
oroboros Wonderful! Happy collecting. :o) Aug 30, 2007
ecrivaine33 I just heard the word "riparian" for the first time ever today used twice in an NPR story on the California levees and wondered what the heck it meant. Now I know.
I love coming across new words, scribbling them down during my commute and then looking them up later. Words are like jewels to me, each one as precious as the one before, and no two ever exactly the same, like snowflakes. Plus, words are the one thing you can never take away from me, not through poverty or old age or anything. Even if we couldn't speak or see, they'd stay richly, deeply rooted in our minds, echoing throughout between synapses, in the fertile soil that can never amass too many of them in its vastness.
Sometimes, just for kicks, when I'm riding the train home from work, I take a blank paper journal page and write one word at the top. Then, I will write until I run out of ideas -- writing one word or phrase after another, which the initial word helps to spark inside my mind. In this way, I go on a kind of psychedelic word "trip," and, before I know it, I'm at my stop, which is a 40-minute ride to the end of the rail line and I'm feeling energized and full of new wonder. Aug 30, 2007