Skip to content
ARCHIEENGLISH
LearnPlayWordsRanking
  • Learn
  • Play
  • Words
  • Ranking
  • Mine
← Vocabulary

estuary

UK/ˈɛstjʊəɹi/US/ˈɛst͡ʃuˌɛɹi/
nounB2+Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,904 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: estuaries

An estuary is the wide mouth where a river meets the sea. The Thames estuary, mudflats in the estuary, an estuary bird.

The water is brackish, neither fresh nor salt, and the mudflats it leaves are among the richest feeding grounds birds have. Estuary English is a named accent, spreading out from London along the Thames.

Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Laboratory, NASA Johnson Space Center · Public domain

Definitions of estuary

  1. 1nounestuaryThe wide mouth where a river meets the sea.B2+

    “Wading birds feed on the mudflats of the estuary when the tide goes out.”

estuary is a waterway.

Where it comes from

Latin aestuarium comes from aestus, the tide or surge.

  1. Latin

    aestuarium — creek”, “estuary of a river

  2. English, today

    estuary

From Latin aestuarium (“creek”, “estuary of a river”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Nature & Weather

Practise this word

estuary in the wild

  • Covering around 635 km2, it is the largest estuary in Western Europe.

    Gironde estuary

  • Since 2015, the Gironde estuary has been part of the Gironde estuary and Pertuis sea Marine Nature Park.

    Gironde estuary

  • The Wash is a shallow natural rectangular bay and multiple estuary on the east coast of England in the United Kingdom.

    The Wash

  • The Humber is a large tidal estuary on the east coast of Northern England.

    Humber

  • The estuary is navigable for the largest of deep-sea vessels.

    Humber

1 / 3

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.