Definition of "valley"

valley

/ˈvæli/

noun
plural valleys or (obsolete) vallies
1. An elongated depression cast between hills or mountains, often garnished with a river flowing through it.
  Quotations
  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.
  2013 August 16, John Vidal, “Dams endanger ecology of Himalayas”, in The Guardian Weekly, volume 189, number 10, page 8
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.
verb
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.
  Quotations
  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; […]
  1879, George Meredith, chapter XVIII, in The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative. […], volume I, London: C[harles] Kegan Paul & Co., […], page 323
  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, […]
  1970, Charles Wright, The Grave of the Right Hand, Middletown, C.T.: Wesleyan University Press, page 25
  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.
  2009, Gian Franco Romagnoli, The Bicycle Runner: A Memoir of Love, Loyalty, and the Italian Resistance, New York, N.Y.: Thomas Dunne Books, page 117

Definition of "valley"

valley

noun

Quotations

verb

Quotations