Tailwater
noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The water located immediately downstream from a hydraulic structure, such as a dam, bridge, or culvert. countable, uncountable
"Like the more renowned Missouri and Henry’s Fork of Montana and Idaho, it is a tailwater fishery; that is, it owes its remarkable fecundity and its population of big wild trout to the cold-water outflow of reservoir impoundment."
Example
More examples"Like the more renowned Missouri and Henry’s Fork of Montana and Idaho, it is a tailwater fishery; that is, it owes its remarkable fecundity and its population of big wild trout to the cold-water outflow of reservoir impoundment."
Etymology
From tail + water.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.