valley definition

English valley definition

Etymology

From Middle English valey, valeye, from Anglo-Norman valey, Old French valee (compare French vallée), from Latin vallēs/vallis. Doublet of vlei. Displaced native dene, from Old English dene.

Pronunciation

• enPR: văl'ē, IPA^(key): /ˈvæli/

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• Rhymes: -æli

Noun

valley (plural valleys or (obsolete) vallies)

1. An elongated depression cast between hills or mountains, often garnished with a river flowing through it.

   Synonyms: dale, (poetic) vale; see also Thesaurus:valley

   The Indus River valley was the site of an ancient civilization.

   • 2013 August 16, John Vidal, “Dams endanger ecology of Himalayas”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 10, page 8:

     Most of the Himalayan rivers have been relatively untouched by dams near their sources. Now the two great Asian powers, India and China, are rushing to harness them as they cut through some of the world's deepest valleys.

2. An area which drains itself into a river.
3. Any structure resembling one, e.g. the interior angle formed by the intersection of two sloping roof planes.

Antonyms

• levée

Hyponyms

• closed-cut valley
• open valley

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Verb

valley (third-person singular simple present valleys, present participle valleying, simple past and past participle valleyed)

1. (intransitive, poetic, rare) To form the shape of a valley.
   • 1879, George Meredith, chapter XVIII, in The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative. […], volume I, London: C[harles] Kegan Paul & Co., […], →OCLC, page 323:

     These hues of red rose and green and pale green, ruffled and pouted in the billowy white of the dress ballooning and valleying softly, like a yacht before the sail bends low; […]

   • 1970, Charles Wright, The Grave of the Right Hand, Middletown, C.T.: Wesleyan University Press, →ISBN, page 25:

     Over Govino Bay, looking up from the water’s edge, the landscape resembles nothing so much as the hills above Genova, valleying into the sea, […]

   • 2009, Gian Franco Romagnoli, The Bicycle Runner: A Memoir of Love, Loyalty, and the Italian Resistance, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Dunne Books, →ISBN, page 117:

     There must be something atavistic in the male blood that makes it rush, relent, rush with the peaks and the valleys, the roundness of Lia's breasts valleying and peaking, the stretch of her neck, the swaying of her hips.

References

• “valley, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.
• “valley, v.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, launched 2000.

Anagrams

• Lavely, y'all've

Manx valley definition

Noun

valley

1. Lenited form of balley.