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

waterfall

UK/ˈwɔːtəfɔːl/
nounB1Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,219 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: waterfalls

A waterfall is a river falling straight down over the edge of a cliff. A great waterfall, the waterfall roared, swim below the waterfall.

They form where hard rock lies over soft: the soft rock erodes from beneath and the fall retreats upstream, which is how Niagara has moved miles over eleven thousand years. Angel Falls in Venezuela is the tallest, at nearly a kilometre.

Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of waterfall

  1. 1nounwaterfallA river falling over the edge of a cliff.B1

    “We walked behind the waterfall and got soaked by the spray.”

waterfall is a fall of water.

Where it comes from

Old English waetergefeall is water plus fall.

  1. Old English

    wæterġefeall — waterfall

  2. Middle English

    waterfal

  3. English, today

    waterfall

From Middle English waterfal, waterfalle, from Old English wæterġefeall (“waterfall”), equivalent to water + fall. Cognate with West Frisian wetterfal (“waterfall”), Dutch waterval (“waterfall”), German Wasserfall (“waterfall”), Swedish vattenfall (“waterfall”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Nature & Weather

Practise this word

waterfall in the wild

  • A waterfall is any point in a river or stream where water flows over a vertical drop or a series of steep drops.

    Waterfall

  • See additional lists of waterfalls by height, flow rate and type.

    List of waterfalls

  • A plunge pool (or plunge basin or waterfall lake) is a deep depression in a stream bed at the base of a waterfall or shut-in.

    Plunge pool

  • The following is a list of waterfalls in India sorted by state.

    List of waterfalls in India

  • The Indian state of Karnataka has more waterfalls than any other state.

    List of waterfalls in India

1 / 2

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.