Barnaby Bear has learned lots of new words in his project on rivers. He has made them into a helpful glossary. Click on the first letter of the word you want to find it in the dictionary.
Some of these words have other meanings, but here Barnaby Bear has just included their " river" meaning.
A B C D E F G I L M P R S T U W
Abrasion - process: rocks that are transported by the river wear away the riverbed
Attrition - process: when rocks are bounced along the riverbed, they knock against each other and
wear away, becoming more rounded
Click here to see these processes in action.
Bank - (riverbank) the ground at the side of a river
Basin - a riverbasin is the area that is drained by a river system
Bed - the riverbed is the ground at the bottom of the river - often made up of sand and stones
Causeway - a road that is raised up above water, marsh, or sand
Channel - a groove in the land that a river flows along
Chart - a nautical map, or map for ships and boats
Current - the flow of the river - if it is a fast current, the water is moving fast
Confluence - a junction where two rivers or streams meet
Deposition - (dep - oh- si - shun) the water deposits, or drops material like sand, mud, and small stones
or sticks. This often happens on the inside of meanders, because the water is flowing slowly.
Depth - how deep the water is: if you stood in it, how far up your legs would it come?
Divert - alter the course of water. In some places, rivers have been made to flow into man-made channels,
to divert the river away from (or towards) something, or into lakes.
Downstream - the direction that the river flows, towards the mouth of the river
Erode - wear away, in this case by water and rocks constantly rubbing
Estuary - near or at the mouth of a river, where the tide meets the current and the
fresh and salt waters mix
Ford - a point where a road goes through a river
Freshwater - water that has no salt in it
Gorge - a steep sided channel caused by a waterfall eroding the ground
Click here to see how a gorge is made.
Irrigation - in areas where there is not much rainfall, farmers irrigate the land, by diverting water from rivers to their fields, in channels, ditches or pipes.
Load - what the river carries along with it: mud, sand, rocks
Meander - (me - an - der) a bend in a river
Meanders - if something 'meanders' it follows a wavy, winding path
Click here for more information on meanders.
Mouth - the end of the river, where it flows into the sea
Moorings - the place where a ship or boat is docked (or tied up)
Plunge pool - a pool at the foot of a small water-fall in a river. The pool is deep because the water plunging
into it has eroded the river bed.
Pollution - materials that are not supposed to be in the river make it dirty (pollute it): not
nice to look at for humans, and not good to live in for animals.
Pontoon - wooden walkways in a harbour or marina that let people walk over the water
picture
River system - a river is a system, with inputs (rain and groundwater flow into it) and outputs (it
flows into the sea).
Runoff - water that has from something. Usually rain water that has a roof into
a gutter, or run - off sloping ground into a channel or pond
Saline - salty, water from the sea is saltwater, or saline
Saltation - a process: when small rocks are bounced along the riverbed by the stream.
This process causes attrition, and adds to the silt and sediment in the river
Sediment - material that settles to the bottom of water
Silt - tiny pieces of sand or rocks: these are dropped by the water on the inside of a
meander where the current is slow
Source - where the stream begins: usually where there is a spring, and quite high up
Spring - where water 'springs' out of the ground: often in marsh or bog areas
Transportation - a process: when the river moves, or transports materials (it's
load) from one place to another, it is called transportation
Tributary - (trib - you - tary) a stream or river that flows into the river
Upstream - oposite to the currents flow - towards the source of the river
Watershed - the area of land that drains into a river : the watershed line usually follows the tops
of hills
Wetlands - areas where the ground is full of water, and often floods easily: usually near rivers and
esturys, wetlands are special habitats where particular (often rare) plants and animals live
Width - how wide the river is, from one bank to the other
