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river

Pronunciation: /ˈrɪvə/
Translate river | into French | into German | into Italian | into Spanish
Definition of river

noun

  • a large natural stream of water flowing in a channel to the sea, a lake, or another river:the River Danube the Mekong River [as modifier]: river pollution
  • a large quantity of a flowing substance:great rivers of molten lava
  • used in names of animals and plants living in or associated with rivers, e.g. river dolphin.

Phrases

sell someone down the river

informal betray someone, especially so as to benefit oneself: he said they were management lackeys who had been sold down the river by Bunker
[earlier referring to the sale of a troublesome slave to the owner of a sugar-cane plantation on the lower Mississippi, where conditions were relatively harsher]

up the river

North American informal to or in prison: we were lucky not to be sent up the river that time boy
[with allusion to Sing Sing prison, situated up the Hudson River from the city of New York]

Derivatives

rivered

adjective

riverless

adjective

Origin:

Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French, based on Latin riparius, from ripa 'bank of a river'

river in other Oxford dictionaries

Definition of river in the US English dictionary

Nearby words

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