river

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A large natural stream of water emptying into an ocean, lake, or other body of water and usually fed along its course by converging tributaries.
2. n. A stream or abundant flow: a river of tears.
3. idiom. up the river Slang In or into prison.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. One who rives or splits.
2. n. A considerable body of water flowing with a perceptible current in a certain definite course or channel, and usually without cessation during the entire year. Some watercourses, however, are called rivers although their beds may be almost, or even entirely, dry during more or less of the year. As water must find its way downward, under the influence of gravity, wherever the opportunity is offered, most rivers reach the ocean, which is the lowest attainable level, either independently or by uniting with some other stream; but this process of joining and becoming merged in another river may be repeated several times before the main stream is finally reached. As a general rule, the river which heads furthest from the sea, or which has the longest course, retains its name, while the affluents entering it lose their identity when merged in the larger stream. There are various exceptions to this, one of the most remarkable of which is the Mississippi, which retains that name to its mouth, although the affluent called the Missouri is much longer than the Mississippi and somewhat larger at the junction. Asia, North America, and South America have “closed basins,” or regions in which the surplus water does not find its way to the sea, for the reason that there evaporation is in excess of precipitation, so that the water cannot accumulate to a height sufficient to allow it to run over at the lowest point in the edge of the basin, and thus reach the sea. The water carried by rivers is rain or melted snow, a part of which runs on the surface to the nearest rivulet while the rain is falling, or immediately after it has fallen, while a larger part consists of that rain-water which, falling upon a permeable material, such as sand and gravel, sinks beneath the surface for a certain distance, and then makes its way to the nearest available river, more or less slowly according to the permeability of the superficial material, the extent to which it is saturated with water, and the nature and position of the impermeable beds, as of clay or crystalline rocks, which may underlie it. Were the surface everywhere entirely impermeable, the rainfall would be carried at once to the nearest rivers, and disastrous freshets would be the rule rather than the exception in regions of large rainfall. It is a matter of great importance that many of the largest rivers head in high mountain regions, where the precipitation is chiefly or entirely in the form of snow, which can melt only gradually, so that disastrous floods are thus prevented, while the winter's precipitation in many regions is stored away for summer's use, extensive tracts being thus made available for habitation which otherwise would be deserts. The size of a river depends chiefly on the orographical features and the amount of rainfall of the region through which it flows. Thus, the Amazon is the largest river in the world because the peculiar topography of South America causes the drainage of a vast region (over a million and a half square miles) to converge toward one central line, and because throughout the whole course of that river and its branches there is a region of very large rainfall. The Orinoco, although draining an area less than one fifth of that of the Amazon, is navigable for fully 1,000 miles, and is, when full, over three miles wide at 560 miles from its mouth, because it drains a region of extraordinarily large precipitation. The Missouri-Mississippi, on the other hand, although draining an area nearly as large as that of the Amazon, is very much inferior to that river in volume at its mouth, because it flows for a considerable part of its course through a region where the precipitation is very small, while it is not extraordinarily large in any part of the Mississippi basin. The area drained by any river is called its basin; but this term is not generally used except with reference to a river of considerable size, and then includes the main river and all its affluents. The edge of a river-basin is the watershed, in the United States frequently called the divide, and this may be a mountain-range or an entirely inconspicuous elevation of the surface. Thus, for a part of the distance, the divide between the Mississippi basin and that of the Great Lakes is quite imperceptible topographically. Exceptionally some large rivers (as the Amazon and Orinoco) inosculate with each other.
3. n. In law, a stream of flowing water, of greater magnitude than a rivulet or brook. It may be navigable or not; the right to use it may be purely public, or it may be private property; it may arise from streams, or constitute the outlet of a lake; it may be known by the appellation of river or by some other name—these particulars not being material to its legal character as a river. Bishop.
4. n. A large stream; copious flow; abundance: as, rivers of oil.

Wiktionary

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 sea. Occasionally rivers overflow their banks and cause floods.
2. n. Any large flow of a liquid in a single body (e.g., 'a river of blood').
3. n. poker The last card dealt in a hand.
4. v. poker To improve one’s hand to beat another player on the final card in a poker game.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. One who rives or splits.
2. n. 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.
3. n. Fig.: A large stream; copious flow; abundance.
4. v. obsolete To hawk by the side of a river; to fly hawks at river fowl.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a large natural stream of water (larger than a creek)