swale

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. A low tract of land, especially when moist or marshy.
2. n. A long, narrow, usually shallow trough between ridges on a beach, running parallel to the coastline.
3. n. A shallow troughlike depression that carries water mainly during rainstorms or snow melts.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A shade, or shady spot.
2. n. A low place; a slight depression in a region in general nearly level, especially one of the lower tracts of what is called in the western United States “rolling prairie.” These depressions arc usually moister than the adjacent higher land, and often have a ranker vegetation, due to the enrichment resulting from the washing down of the finer and richer part of the soil of the higher land about them.
3. Bleak; windy.
4. To melt and run down, as from heat; show the effects of great heat, whether by melting or by burning slowly.
5. To burn, whether by singeing or by causing to melt or to run down; especially, to dress, as an animal killed for food, by singeing off the hair.
6. n. A gutter in a candle.

Wiktionary

1. n. A low tract of moist or marshy land.
2. n. A long narrow and shallow trough between ridges on a beach, running parallel to the coastline.
3. n. A shallow troughlike depression that's created to carry water during rainstorms or snow melts; a drainage ditch.
4. n. A shallow, usually grassy depression sloping downward from a plains upland meadow or level vegetated ridgetop.
5. n. A shallow trough dug into the land on contour (horizontally with no slope). Its purpose being to allow water time to percolate into the soil.
6. n. UK, dialect A gutter in a candle.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. Prov. Eng. & Local, U.S. A valley or low place; a tract of low, and usually wet, land; a moor; a fen.
2. v. To melt and waste away; to singe. See sweal, v.
3. n. Prov. Eng. A gutter in a candle.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a low area (especially a marshy area between ridges)