Valley Meaning
/ˈvæli/Definition, CEFR level A1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounAn elongated depression cast between hills or mountains, often with a river flowing through it.
nounAn area which drains itself into a river.
Sentence Examples
A beautiful valley lies behind the hill.
The settlers learned that the land in the valley was fertile.
In the valley below cows were grazing peacefully.
CEFR Practice Quiz
The river flowed gently through the green ____ between two high mountains.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The path led down into a narrow ____, where a small river flowed through a series of beautiful green fields today.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English valeye, valey, from Anglo-Norman valey, Old French valee (compare French vallée), from Latin vallēs/vallis. Doublet of vlei and vly. Displaced native dene, from dene and partially displaced native dale, from dæl.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"[I]t sank down through the air and poured over the ground in a manner rather liquid than gaseous, abandoning the hills, and streaming into the valleys and ditches and water-courses even as I have heard the carbonic acid gas that pours from volcanic clefts is wont to do."
— 1898, H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, London: William Heinemann, page 144:
"The El Dorado-Searchlight area is geologically a north-south trending orogenous zone, paralleled on the east by the valley of the Colorado, and by an alluvial valley on the west."
— 1968, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, volumes 11-14, page vi:
"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:
"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., […], →OCLC, 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, →ISBN, page 25:
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CEFR Practice Quiz
The river flowed gently through the green ____ between two high mountains.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The path led down into a narrow ____, where a small river flowed through a series of beautiful green fields today.