Alluvium

Definition: Alluvium

Alluvium

Noun

1. Clay or slit or gravel carried by rushing streams and deposited where the stream slows down.

Date "alluvium" was first used: 1665. (references)

Etymology: Alluvium \Al*lu"vi*um\, noun; plural English Alluviums, from Latin expression Alluvia. [Latin expression, neut. of alluvius. See Alluvious.]. (Websters 1913)

Domain	Definitions
Food & Agriculture	Deposited from flowing or still water ; deposits of debris, soil and particles resulting from erosion transported by rainwater, by a stream or by the sea. Source: European Union. (references)
	The finer soil fractions viz. clay and silt. Source: European Union. (references)
Geography	Material deposited by running water, such as mud, sand, gravel, or wood. Source: European Union. (references)
Geological	Sand, gravel, and silt deposited by rivers and streams in a valley bottom. (references)
	Loose gravel, sand, silt, or clay deposited by streams. (references)
Hydrologic	Deposits of clay, silt, sand, gravel, or other particulate material that has been deposited by a stream or other body of running water in a streambed, on a flood plain, on a delta, or at the base of a mountain. (references)
	Sediments deposited by erosional processes, usual by streams. (references)
Mining	A. A general term for clay, silt, sand, gravel, or similar unconsolidated detrital material, deposited during comparatively recent geologic time by a stream or other body of running water, (1) as sediment in the bed of the stream or on its flood plain or delta, (2) as a cone or fan at the base of a mountain slope; esp., such a deposit of fine-grained texture (silt or silty clay) deposited during time of flood. Syn:alluvial deposit; alluvion b. A driller's term for the broken, earthy rock material directly below the soil layer and above the solid, unbroken bed or ledge rock. Etymol: Latin alluvius, from alluere, to wash against. Plural: alluvia; alluvium. (references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Alluvium is soil land deposited by a river or other running water. Glaciers may also deposit alluvium, see glacial till.

A river is continually picking up and dropping solid particles of rock and dirt from its bed throughout its length. Where the river flow is fast, more particles are picked up than dropped. Where the river flow is slow, more particles are dropped than picked up. Areas where more particles are dropped are called alluvial or flood plains, and the dropped particles are called alluvium.

Even small streams make alluvial deposits, but it is in the flood plains and deltass of large rivers that large, gelogically-significant alluvial deposits are found.

Alluvium is typically made up of a variety of materials. The finer material, or silt, consists of sand and mud. Larger particles, or gravel, are also typically present in a wide range of sizes.

The amount of solid matter carried by a large river is enormous. The names of many rivers derive from the color that the transported matter gives the water. For example, the Huang He in China is, literally translated, Yellow river and the Missouri River in the United States is also called Big Muddy. It has been estimated that the Mississippi River annually carries 406 million tons of sediment to the sea, the Huang He 796 million tons, and the Po River in Italy 67 million tons.

Alluvial deposits often contain valuable ores such as gold and platinum and a wide variety of gemstones.

Throughout history many shallow lakes have been filled in with alluvium, leaving fertile plains. Alluvial soils are almost always very fertile. The alluvial mud annually deposited by the Nile has enabled the Egyptians have been able to grow crops since at least the 4th millennium BC without artificial fertilization.

Synonyms: Alluvium

Synonyms: alluvial deposit (n), alluvial sediment (n), alluvion (n). (additional references)

Context	Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus).
Land	Coast, shore, scar, strand, beach; playa; bank, lea; seaboard, seaside, seabank, seacoast, seabeach; ironbound coast; loom of the land; derelict; innings; alluvium, alluvion; ancon.
Remainder	Noun: remainder, residue; remains, remanent, remnant, rest, relic; leavings, heeltap, odds and ends, cheesepairings, candle ends, orts; residuum; dregs; (dirt); refuse; (useless); stubble, result, educt; fag-end; ruins, wreck, skeleton., stump; alluvium.
Uncleanness	Mud, mire, quagmire, alluvium, silt, sludge, slime, slush, slosh, sposh.
Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus.

Crosswords: Alluvium

English words defined with "alluvium": Alluvia, alluvial, Alluviums ♦ regosol. (references)

Specialty definitions using "alluvium": alluvial flat, alluvial values ♦ block field, block sea, blockmeer ♦ chaos of rocks, continental alluvium, cutter dredge ♦ fan scar, felsenmeer, filling up with alluvium, floating reef, flood plain ♦ Ground Water Outflow ♦ heavy mineral ♦ Lacey's formula ♦ mountain-top detritus ♦ quartz claim ♦ regolith ♦ solid map, stone field ♦ tin ground. (references)

Non-English Usage: "Alluvium" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses.

Afrikaan (alluvion, alluvium), Dutch (alluvion, alluvium), German (alluvion, alluvium), Hungarian (alluvia, alluvion, alluvium, river deposits), Swedish (alluvium).

Domain	Title
Books	Archaeology and alluvium in the Trent Valley : an archaeological assessment of the floodplain and gravel terraces (reference) Quaternary Alluvium (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Title	Author	Quote
Les Miserables	Hugo, Victor	But to those who study language as it should be studied, that is to say as geologists study the earth, argot appears, as it were, a true alluvium.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

"Alluvium" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Alluvium" is used about 25 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (singular)	100%	25	69,787

Expressions using "alluvium": alluvium period ♦ filling up with alluvium. Additional references.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Language		Translations for "alluvium"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Afrikaan		alluvium (alluvion), alluvio (alluvion), alluvie (alluvion). (various references)

Albanian		aluvion (alluvion), lymishte. (various references)

Arabic		‏غرين (alluvial, silt, slime), ‏طمي (alluvial, debris, silt, wash). (various references)

Bulgarian		нанос (alluvion, blanket, debris, deposit, deposition, drift, float, silt, warp, wash), алувий (alluvial, alluvion). (various references)

Czech		aluvium, náplav (alluvion). (various references)

Danish		alluvium (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash), alluvial deposit (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash), aflejring (accretion, aggradation, alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluviation, alluvion, bedding, crud, deposit, deposition, drift, drop crater, droplet impaction, fluvial outwash, fouling, point deposit, precipitate, sediment, sedimentation, silting, spray coating, spray deposit), postglaciale aflejringer, flodaflejring (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial deposit, fluvial outwash, fluvial sediment), dynd (bagger, dirt, meermolm, mud, silt, slime, slush). (various references)

Dutch		alluvium (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash). (various references)

Esperanto		aluvio (alluvion). (various references)

Faeroese		strandvarp (alluvion). (various references)

Finnish		alluviumi (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash), alluvium (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash), alluuvi (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash), tulvamaa (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash, inundated land, riverside soil), postglasiaalinen kerrostuma, maatuma (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash), liettymä (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash), lietemaa (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash). (various references)

French		alluvion (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion). (various references)

German		Alluvium (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash). (various references)

Greek		πρόσχωση (accretion, aggradation, aggrading, alluviation, bench, silting). (various references)

Hebrew		סחופת (sediment, silt). (various references)

Hungarian		lerakódás (bed, crust, foot, lodgement, lodgment, sediment, sedimentation, settlings, sludge, subsidence), hordalék (alluvion, burden, drift, offal, river deposits, silt, wash). (various references)

Italian		alluvium, alluvioni (alluvial deposit, fluvial deposit, river deposit), alluvione (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, flood, flooding, fluvial outwash, inundation, rainstorm), risacca (backwash, surf, undertow), limo (silt, slime, suspended load, suspended sediment, turbidity), detrito alluvionale (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, detritus, fluvial outwash), deposito fluviale (alluvial deposit, fluvial deposit, river deposit), deposito alluvionale (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial deposit, fluvial outwash, fluvial sediment, river deposit), deposito alluviale (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash). (various references)

Japanese Kanji		沖積層 (alluvial stratum). (various references)

Japanese Katakana		ちゅうせきそう (alluvial stratum). (various references)

Manx		gleayr. (various references)

Pig Latin		alluviumay

Portuguese		aluvião (accretion, aggradation, alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluviation, alluvion, deluge, flood, fluvial outwash, silt, silting, wash). (various references)

Romanian		aluviune (alluvia, drift, ooze, silt, warp), podmol. (various references)

Russian		нанос (alluvion, bank, blanket). (various references)

Serbo-Croatian		aluvijum, namet (impost). (various references)

Spanish		aluvión (alluvial, alluvial deposit, alluvion, fluvial outwash). (various references)

Swedish		alluvium. (various references)

Turkish		alüvyonlu arazi, alüvyon (alluvion, placer, silt). (various references)

Ukranian		наносна земля, алювій (wash), алювіальні формації. (various references)

Welsh		llifbridd, dolbridd. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Language	Period	Translations
Latin	500 BCE-Modern	alluere. (various references)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Derivations
	Words beginning with "alluvium": alluviums. (additional references)
Misspellings
	"Alluvium" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: allivium, alluviam, alluvian, alluvum, aluvium, callovian. (additional references)
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

# of Phoneme Matches	Pronunciation	Word(s) rhyming with "alluvium" (pronounced uluw"vēum)
3	-ē u m	ammonium, aquarium, atrium, auditorium, axiom, bacterium, barium, beryllium, cadmium, calcium, cesium, chromium, colloquium, compendium, condominium, consortium, crematorium, delirium, deuterium, disequilibrium, emporium, equilibrium, europium, fermium, gallium, geranium, gonium, gymnasium, hafnium, harmonium, helium, Herbarium, holmium, honorarium, idiom, indium, iridium, lawrencium, linoleum, lithium, magnesium, medium, millennium, minium, moratorium, myocardium, nephridium, neptunium, niobium, nobelium, opium, opprobrium, osmium, palladium, pandemonium, paramecium, petroleum, planetarium, Plasmodium, plutonium, podium, polonium, potassium, premium, presidium, promethium, protium, psyllium, radium, requiem, rhodium, selenium, sodium, stadium, strontium, superpremium, symposium, tedium, tellurium, thallium, thorium, titanium, tritium, uranium, vanadium, yttrium, zirconium.
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits.

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "a-i-l-l-m-u-u-v"
	-2 letters: allium.
	-3 letters: maill, miaul, mulla, uvula, villa.
	-4 letters: alum, lima, luau, lulu, mail, mall, maul, mill, mull, ulva, vail, vial, vill.
	-5 letters: ail, aim, all, ami, amu, ill, lam, lav, lum, luv, mil, ulu, vau, via, vim.
	Words containing the letters "a-i-l-l-m-u-u-v"
	+1 letter: alluviums.
	+4 letters: cumulatively.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.