Definition
nounA small river; a large creek; a body of moving water confined by banks.
Sentence Examples
As he crossed the bridge, he looked down at the stream.
The ball rolled into the stream.
The course of the stream has now been diverted.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English streem, strem, from Old English strēam, from Proto-West Germanic *straum, from Proto-Germanic *straumaz (“stream”), from Proto-Indo-European *srowmos (“river”), from Proto-Indo-European *srew- (“to flow”). Doublet of rheum.
Cognate with Scots strem, streme, streym (“stream, river”), North Frisian Stroom, struum (“stream”), West Frisian stream (“stream”), Low German Stroom (“stream”), Dutch stroom (“current, flow, stream”), German Strom (“current, stream”), Danish and Norwegian Bokmål strøm (“current, stream, flow”), Norwegian Nynorsk straum (“current, stream, flow”), Swedish ström (“current, stream, flow”), Faroese streymur (“stream”), Icelandic straumur (“current, stream, torrent, flood”), Ancient Greek ῥεῦμα (rheûma, “stream, flow”), Lithuanian srovė (“current, stream”) Polish strumień (“stream”), Welsh ffrwd (“stream, current”), Scottish Gaelic sruth (“stream”).
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Now we plunged into a deep shade with the boughs lacing each other overhead, and crossed dainty, rustic bridges over the cold trout-streams, the boards giving back the clatter of our horses' feet:[…]."
— 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter VIII, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
"European adventurers found themselves within a watery world, a tapestry of streams, channels, wetlands, lakes and lush riparian meadows enriched by floodwaters from the Mississippi River."
— 2013 January 26, Nancy Langston, “The Fraught History of a Watery World”, in American Scientist, volume 101, number 1, page 59:
"With a little manœuvring they contrived to meet on the doorstep which was […] in a boiling stream of passers-by, hurrying business people speeding past in a flurry of fumes and dust in the bright haze."
— 1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 10, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC:
"A new stream of migrants is leaving the continent. It threatens to become a torrent if the debt crisis continues to worsen."
— 2011 December 21, Helen Pidd, “Europeans migrate south as continent drifts deeper into crisis”, in the Guardian:
"If your favorite Succession storylines involve the fictional ATN and network drama, give Apple TV’s The Morning Show a stream."
— 2023 May 3, Courtney Young, “13 Shows to Binge When ‘Succession’ Ends”, in Cosmopolitan: