River

//ˈɹɪvɚ// name, noun, verb

name, noun, verb ·Very common ·Middle school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A large and often winding stream which drains a land mass, carrying water down from higher areas to a lower point, oftentimes ending in another body of water, such as an ocean or in an inland sea.

    "Occasionally rivers overflow their banks and cause floods."

  2. 2
    One who rives or splits.
  3. 3
    a large natural stream of water (larger than a creek) wordnet
  4. 4
    Any large flow of a liquid in a single body.

    "a river of blood"

  5. 5
    The last card dealt in a hand.

    "He called instantly but was too ashamed to show until the river."

Show 1 more definition
  1. 6
    A visually undesirable effect of white space running down a page, caused by spaces between words on consecutive lines happening to coincide.
Verb
  1. 1
    To improve one’s hand to beat another player on the final card in a poker game.

    "Johnny rivered me by drawing that ace of spades."

Proper Noun
  1. 1
    A unisex given name. countable, uncountable

    "Wash: Little River gets more colorful by the moment. What'll she do next? Zoe: Either blow us all up or rub soup in our hair. It's a toss-up. Wash: I hope she does the soup thing, it's always a hoot and we don't all die from it."

  2. 2
    A surname. countable, rare, uncountable
  3. 3
    A place name:; A suburban village and civil parish in Dover district, Kent, England (OS grid ref TR2943). countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    A place name:; A hamlet in Tillington parish, Chichester district, West Sussex, England (OS grid ref SU9322). countable, uncountable
  5. 5
    A place name:; A township in Red Lake County, Minnesota, United States. countable, uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
adolescent streamanabrancharroyoarroyobayoubeck

Example

More examples

"It is dangerous for you to swim in this river."

Etymology

Etymology 1

From Middle English ryver, from Anglo-Norman rivere, from Early Medieval Latin rīpāria (“littoral, riverbank”), from Latin rīpārius (“of a riverbank”), from Latin rīpa (“river bank”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁reyp- (“to scratch, tear, cut”). Unrelated to Latin rīvus (“stream”) (whence rival, derive). Doublet of riviera and rivière. Displaced native Old English ēa.

Etymology 2

From rive + -er.

Etymology 3

From river.

Related phrases

Abba RiverAdelaide RiverAgidel RiverAlice RiverAmazon river dolphinAmerican RiverAmur RiverAngelo RiverApple RiverArcher RiverArm RiverArthur River

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.