ESTUARY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does estuary mean? 

• ESTUARY (noun)
  The noun ESTUARY has 1 sense:

1. the wide part of a river where it nears the sea; fresh and salt water mix

  Familiarity information: ESTUARY used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ESTUARY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The wide part of a river where it nears the sea; fresh and salt water mix

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Hypernyms ("estuary" is a kind of...):

body of water; water (the part of the earth's surface covered with water (such as a river or lake or ocean))

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "estuary"):

firth (a long narrow estuary (especially in Scotland))

Instance hyponyms:

Humber (an estuary in central northeastern England formed by the Ouse River and the Trent River)

Para; Para River (an estuary in northern Brazil into which the Tocantins River flows)

La Plata; Plata River; Rio de la Plata (an estuary between Argentina and Uruguay)

Holonyms ("estuary" is a part of...):

river (a large natural stream of water (larger than a creek))

Derivation:

estuarial (of or relating to or found in estuaries)

 Context examples 

Behind them might still be seen the broad estuary of the Gironde, with the high towers of Saint Andre and Saint Remi shooting up from the plain.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They found that the larvae were attracted to the sounds of tropical estuaries under current conditions, but deterred by the same sounds under simulated future ocean conditions.

(Fish larvae lose their way to safety in acidified oceans, SciDev.Net)

The shores of North Inlet were as thickly wooded as those of the southern anchorage, but the space was longer and narrower and more like, what in truth it was, the estuary of a river.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

Glass eels then enter estuaries, where they continue their migration upstream to freshwater until later in life (up to age 50), when, as silver eels, they navigate back to the Sargasso Sea to spawn and die.

(Study uncovers magnetic memory of European glass eels, National Science Foundation)

A dull scraping came from beneath, the vessel quivered and shook, at the waist, at the quarter, and behind sounded that grim roaring of the waters, and with a plunge the yellow cog was over the bar and speeding swiftly up the broad and tranquil estuary of the Gironde.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A new study led by researchers at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and the Institute of Marine Research in Norway found that European glass eels use their magnetic sense to imprint a memory of water currents in the estuary where they become juveniles.

(Study uncovers magnetic memory of European glass eels, National Science Foundation)

The findings show that glass eels use an internal compass to memorize the magnetic direction of tidal flows in the estuaries where they were juveniles, which may help them orient in moving water during migration.

(Study uncovers magnetic memory of European glass eels, National Science Foundation)