TRIBUTARY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does tributary mean? 

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

1. a branch that flows into the main stream

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

• TRIBUTARY (adjective)
  The adjective TRIBUTARY has 3 senses:

1. (of a stream) flowing into a larger stream

2. paying tribute

3. tending to bring about; being partly responsible for

  Familiarity information: TRIBUTARY used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TRIBUTARY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A branch that flows into the main stream

Classified under:

Nouns denoting natural objects (not man-made)

Synonyms:

affluent; confluent; feeder; tributary

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

branch (a stream or river connected to a larger one)

Antonym:

distributary (a branch of a river that flows away from the main stream and does not rejoin it)

• TRIBUTARY (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

(of a stream) flowing into a larger stream

Similar:

secondary (being of second rank or importance or value; not direct or immediate)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Paying tribute

Context example:

a tributary colony

Similar:

obligated (caused by law or conscience to follow a certain course)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Tending to bring about; being partly responsible for

Synonyms:

conducive; contributing; contributive; contributory; tributary

Context example:

a contributory factor

Similar:

causative (producing an effect)

 Context examples 

The researchers interpret the latter to be tributaries that drain into the main channels below.

(Cassini Finds Flooded Canyons on Titan, NASA)

Entering at the open door of one of these, and releasing my arm, she beckoned me to follow her up the common staircase, which was like a tributary channel to the street.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Two of its tributary glaciers also are flowing faster and thinning rapidly.

(Antarctica’s Larsen B Ice Shelf Nearing Its Final Act, NASA)

At this point I reckoned that we had come not less than a hundred miles up the tributary from the main stream.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The study centred on the River Bérchules basin (Granada), which is the easternmost tributary of the River Guadalfeo in the Alpujarra.

(Researchers demonstrate that Sierra Nevada is home to the oldest underground water recharge system in Europe, University of Granada)

A vein originating at the apex of the heart that receives numerous tributaries as it ascends before draining into the left extremity of the coronary sinus.

(Great Cardiac Vein, NCI Thesaurus)

Even more imminent, the White Nile — one of the two main tributaries of the Nile — could lose its source waters in just a decade.

(Environmental change in Africa: Will it lead to a drying Lake Victoria?, National Science Foundation)

The construction of dams along the tributaries of the Amazon poses a serious threat to fish abundance and diversity.

(Amazon fish ‘face new threats’, SciDev.Net)

For many years, Yakutat’s two main tributaries merged and formed a 5-kilometer (3-mile) calving face that extended far into Harlequin Lake.

(Retreat of Yakutat Glacier, NASA)

The whole vast plain of Gascony and of Languedoc is an arid and profitless expanse in winter save where the swift-flowing Adour and her snow-fed tributaries, the Louts, the Oloron and the Pau, run down to the sea of Biscay.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)