Definition of "watercressy"

Did these French trout expect me to dress my fly in garlic or tomato sauce before they would look at it? For that trout must be in such a stream—so clear, so sparkling, so flowing, so curvy, so watercressy—was as clear as that the Republic is a dreadful come-down from the Empire.

1884 November 15, Cotswold Isys [pseudonym; Richard H. Glover], “Trouting in Normandy”, in R[obert] B[right] Marston, editor, The Fishing Gazette; Devoted to Angling, River, Lake, and Sea Fishing and Fish Culture, volume IX, London: […] Charles William Bradley & Co. […], page 237, column 1

Two quick hot soups . . one’s garlicky, one’s watercressy / Those long-time salad favorites, watercress and garlic, take the leading role in these two quick soups for fall.

1981 October, Sunset: The Magazine of Western Living, volume 167, number 4, Menlo Park, Calif.: Lane Publishing Co., page 216

Tables were laid with cold pheasant, watercressy finger foods, sweets sufficient to give the Greater Raleigh Area sugar shock.

1989, Allan Gurganus, “Black, White, and Lilac”, in Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, book two (Time Does That), page 231

Perched up there she could gaze down on the rivulet bubbling through its green watercressy bed, with soft water-meadows, a grazing pony or two, and the fields rising in a smoothly, well-ordered chalk-country way to the near horizon.

2001, Jane Brown, “Carrington”, in Spirits of Place: Five Famous Lives in Their Landscape, London: Viking, page 156

Now we’ll hear all the newses from Ballyvadlea – births, deaths, marriages, childer an’ by-childer, the price of eggs, turkeys, hins, guinea-hins, what the priest roared outa him last Sunda, various unrests, another landlord shot, a bullock maimed, who won the hurlin’ at Mullinahone, who was stretched an’ who The Hayro, an’ who put the bad eye on them geese in the meado’ other side o’ the watercressy strayme there …

2005, Tom Mac Intyre, What Happened Bridgie Cleary: A Play, Dublin: New Island/New Drama, page 57