drowned valley

noun

1. a valley that, having been flooded by the sea, now exists as a bay or estuary.

Word History and Origins

Origin of drowned valley¹

First recorded in 1900–05

Example Sentences

Stumps and dead boughs were rotting in the shallows, the remains it seemed of old thickets, or of a hedge that had once lined the road across the drowned valley.

From Literature

In this great extent of coast, measuring nearly 5,000 miles, there are but few harbours; in the portion belonging to the United States the generally bold coast-line is broken but in two places, one 49 where the Columbia reaches the sea, and the other where the Sacramento finds an outlet through the portions of its drowned valley known as the Golden Gate.

From Project Gutenberg

The Bay of San Francisco owes its origin to a subsidence of the land which has admitted the sea into the valley of the Sacramento, but this valley, which, uniting with the one at the south drained by the San Joaquin, forms the Great Valley of California, is not due to stream erosion, as in the case of the drowned valley of the Hudson or of the St. Lawrence, but to the upraising of the mountains bordering it.

From Project Gutenberg

"Him and me was travellin' hell-bent to meet up with you,—Jake, he was for a short cut to Drowned Valley,—but 'no,' sez I, 'gimme a good hard ridge an' a long deetoor when there's sink-holes into the woods——'" "What is it the talk you talk to me?" asked Quintana, whose perplexed features began to darken.

From Project Gutenberg

He shrugged his indifference, tossed the rifle to his shoulder and, without another glance at the cringing creature on the ground, walked away toward Drowned Valley, unhurriedly.

From Project Gutenberg